Mothercare narrows loss as sales pick up

The company on Thursday said it had made an underlying pretax loss of 0.6 million pounds ($956,100) in the 28 weeks to Oct. 13, compared with a loss of 4.4 million pounds in the same period last year.

Mothercare is cutting prices and improving its delivery service to help fight intense competition from British supermarkets and the Internet and in October posted its first UK underlying sales growth in 11 quarters.

The group, which has 1,378 worldwide stores, including 280 in the UK, said British like-for-like sales had declined by 3.4% in the period, improving on a 7% fall in the period a year ago.

Overseas, where Mothercare has plans to open 150 stores this year, like-for-like sales rose 4.4% although growth in Europe, its biggest international market, was dampened by weak trading conditions in the euro zone. It said it expected similar overseas sales growth in its second half.

Total first-half worldwide network sales rose 2.1% to 636.8 million pounds. Losses in Britain narrowed to 17.0 million pounds, while international profit rose 20% to 22.1 million pounds.

As part of new chief executive Simon Calver's turnaround strategy the group closed 31 UK stores in the first half, and said it was on target to close 50 in total for the year.