Queen Elizabeth hopes baby comes soon as she's off on holiday
British mother and baby products retailer Mothercare is hoping the imminent birth of the nation's heir to the throne will provide a fillip to the business after it reported a drop in sales in its home market in the latest quarter.
Many retailers are finding the going tough as consumers, whose spending generates about two-thirds of British gross domestic product, fret over job security and a squeeze on incomes.
Mothercare has been particularly hard hit because it faces intense competition from supermarkets and internet players.
The firm, which operates in 60 countries, said on Thursday sales at British stores open over a year fell 0.9 percent in the 15 weeks to July 13, its fiscal first quarter, compared with the same period last year, sending its shares down up to 7 percent.
However Chief Executive Simon Calver, in the second year of a three-year turnaround plan aimed at revitalising its loss-making British business, said the firm was well placed to capitalise on the arrival of Prince William and his wife Kate's first child, due any day.
He said Mothercare had put together a celebration range that included "Born to Rule" sleepsuits and "Princess/Prince in Training" bibs and vests, while the flagship Oxford Street store in central London would be transformed to mark the occasion.
"It's hard to gauge what sort of increase we have. I think they'll be a feelgood factor and who knows in nine months time there may even be a tick-up in the birth rate," Calver said.
The company's performance in the latest quarter compares with a weak outcome in the same quarter last year when like-for-like sales slumped 6.7 percent.
ONLINE SALES UP
Though analysts had forecast growth of up to 2 percent, Calver said the outcome was consistent with his expectations for the full 2013-14 year of a 1-2 percent fall in UK like-for-like sales and a possible return to growth in the following year.
While clothing sales and volumes benefited from the launch of new ranges, especially a new value range in July last year, toys and home & travel in particular were hit by an increasingly promotional market, Mothercare said.
The first quarter outcome would have been worse were it not for a 14.6 percent rise in online sales.
Mothercare is improving product ranges and delivery services. British stores are also being revamped and unprofitable ones closed – 56 were closed in 2012-13 and 13 in the first quarter of 2013-14, taking the UK total to 242.
The group's overseas arm has been more fruitful, with international retail sales up 11.3 percent in constant currency.
It opened a net 47 stores overseas during the quarter, taking the total to 1,116 abroad.
Shares in Mothercare, which have more than doubled over the last year, were down 32.5 pence at 439 pence at 0938 GMT, valuing the business at 391 million pounds.
"We view 2013-2014 (profit) as being fully underpinned by store closures, with limited forecast risk. However, with the market already factoring in a further doubling of earnings in 2014-15 the shares look up with events," said Peel Hunt analyst John Stevenson.
Queen Elizabeth hopes baby comes soon as she's off on holiday
Queen Elizabeth joined the band of increasingly impatient royal baby watchers hoping Prince William and his wife Kate's first child arrives soon, saying she is due to go on holiday.
With the future heir to the British throne due any day, the queen, on a series of engagements in the Lake District in northern England, was asked if she would like her third great-grandchild to be a girl or a boy.
"I don't think I mind. I would very much like it to arrive. I'm going on holiday," she told children at the Wiggonby Church of England Primary School on Wednesday, dressed in a green suit and matching hat despite the summer heat.
Every summer the queen leaves London for her Scottish country estate, Balmoral. Her final public engagement before her holiday is next Tuesday.
Queen Elizabeth is the second senior royal this week to publicly express hopes of a imminent arrival for the baby who, regardless of sex, will be third in line to the throne after her son Prince Charles and his son Prince William.
Royal officials have remained vague about the due date of the baby so the world media's has been camped since July 1 outside St. Mary's Hospital in London where Kate is due to give birth, growing increasingly impatient with what has been dubbed the "Great Kate Wait".
Prince Charles's wife Camilla said earlier this week that everyone was "just waiting by the telephone" at the moment and she hoped the baby would arrive by the end of the week.
By tradition, the queen will be the first person to be informed when the baby is born, with a handwritten note taken from the hospital to Buckingham Palace.
A note will then be pinned outside the gates of the palace.
The waiting game has proven a boon for bookmakers offering odds on the date of the birth and for public relations companies pulling royal-related stunts to pique the interest of journalists in need of stories during the summer lull.
Former England football captain David Beckham made headlines this week when he jokingly suggested that the baby could be named David and one bookmaker was offering odds on him being named as a godfather to the royal heir.
A newspaper's website is even streaming live footage of the entrance to the private Lindo wing at the hospital, where Prince William, a helicopter search-and-rescue pilot, was born to the late Princess Diana 31 years ago.
The gender of the baby is said to be unknown as the couple, who married in April 2011 and are known officially as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, want a surprise.
But bookmakers expect a girl and have made Alexandra the favourite for the baby's name, followed by Charlotte, Diana and Elizabeth. George and James are hotly tipped if it is a boy.
