Womenswear brand Noni B has become the first retailer this period to hint at difficult trading conditions and a full-year profit plunge ahead.
The fashion house, which currently operates approximately 200 stores across the country, recently confirmed its unaudited sales revenue as $117.3 million for the year to June 26 2011.
The figure, released in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange, is in line with the retailer's full-year profit for FY2010 ($117.4 million), but Noni B admitted that margins were affected by difficult trading conditions.
As a result, after-tax profit for FY2011, before any goodwill impairment, is expected to be in the range of $600,000 to $800,000 against a profit of $3.9 million in the previous year. This would translate to a drop of almost 85 per cent for the fashion house.
However, Noni B has maintained that cash flow within the business remains strong, with no bank borrowings undertaken by the company and stock at June 26 2011 at 10 per cent lower than a year earlier. The company's audited results will be released next month, August 24.
This is not the first profit blow for the retailer. As reported on Ragtrader.com.au, Noni B suffered a 58 per cent drop in half-year profit to $1.52 million, down from $3.64 million in the previous corresponding period.
The results for the six months to December 26, 2010, also revealed that overall sales for the retailer were $61.4 million, with comparable store sales down 2.1 per cent.
Despite the dive in profit, Noni B opened five new stores during the half year, including one in each the Sydney and Perth central business districts and Noni B joint managing director David Kindl said the new season collections of its two fashion labels, Noni B and Liz Jordan, were doing well at the time.
As reported exclusively in Ragtrader's February 11 print issue, Noni B also recently launched an exclusive designer line into 130 stores in April.