Thorntons melted its share price today after admitting that poor sales in the run up to Valentine's Day and Mother's Day offset strong Easter trading.
Derbyshire-based Thorntons said its third quarter sales fell 7.6% over the 15 weeks to April 26, because of slower supermarket sales in February and March as well as the impact of store closures.
Shares tumbled 15%, even though it said sales of its seasonal specialities grew by more than 20% in a strong Easter performance.
Thorntons, which has suffered several profits warnings in recent years, is in the middle of a turnaround plan that involves cutting its portfolio of high street stores and selling more products through major supermarkets.
During the period the business said its supermarket sales fell 8%, partly due to a poor performance in the run up to Valentine's Day and Mother's Day.
The firm also saw sales at its own high street stores slip 8.8%, reflecting the 38 shops the company had closed during the previous year. Thorntons now has an estate of 271 stores.
Chief executive Jonathan Hart said: "Despite this third quarter result we are satisfied with the overall performance of the business for the year to date."
The company added that it expected to meet its market forecasts for the full year. Analysts forecast the business will turn in a 2014 pre-tax profit of £7.3 million.
The business did see a 5.7% increase in sales at franchise shops, a 5.6% rise in online sales, and a 1.2% like-for-like sales boost at its own stores that have been open for longer than a year.
Analysts at N+1 Singer said that even though the Thorntons update contained both negative and positive news they concluded "that the strategic actions being implemented are having the desired effect".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article