Esprit issues profit warning

Sales keep declining

The Hong Kong-based company tried looking at the bright side however, stating that for the quarter that ended on 31 March the drop of sales on a comparable base had shrunk to -1.5% (compared to -3.6%
during the first half-year 2012-2013). The drop of sales in wholesale is also
slowing down: -9.6% in the third quarter, compared to -13.7% in the first semester,
mainly thanks to supportive measures.

That positive look can however not hide that
Esprit is seriously ill: after nine months sales come to 20.27 billion Hong
Kong dollar (1.98 billion euro), compared to almost 24 billion dollar (almost
2.35 billion euro) for the same period a year earlier: a drop of 15.5%.

Especially in Europe Esprit has its difficulties: sales
declined by 8.7% in retail and no less than 17% in wholesale during the past
nine months. The Old Continent is still worth over three quarters of company
sales. In the region Asia-Australia the drop in sales is limited to -2.2%
(retail) and -11.5% (wholesale). In North America, where Esprit closed all of
its own locations, sales in wholesale are almost halved (-47.3%).

16 more shops to close

Therefore Esprit warns its shareholders for a “substantial
loss” across the entire financial year (which ends on 30 June), attributed to a “bigger
than expected operational loss” (no numbers are given) and one-off provisions
for takeovers of activities in China, the closing of sixteen of its own
locations, leases of another 44 onerous shops and an inventory adjustment.

Current management says it is still working hard
on initiatives for the short and long term to revitalise the company, with a
specific focus on product improvement. It can however only conclude that (potential)
investors should be careful when trading stock of the company. Not a superfluous
warning: when the exchange opened in Hong Kong the share immediately dropped
6.6%.