Forum Archive Index - January 2004

[<philip@goodreturns.co.nz>]

This release may interest this thread;

Following its January Board meeting the Directors of Pacific Retail Group Limited provide the following update after December/January trading. The Group's NZ retail arm experienced excellent trading over the period, exceeding targets as a result of well planned and executed promotional campaigns over Christmas and into January. Like for like sales growth over the period was 8.2% with satisfactory margins. Pacific Retail Finance and Noel Leeming Financial Services continued to perform strongly, maintaining growth in lending with personal loans and continuing to attract funds from retail investors through their first ranking secured debenture offerings. Bendon has performed very strongly over the period. Its results continue the significant increases of the first half of the year and further reinforce our confidence in the strategies and initiatives that have been implemented. The Group's new UK subsidiary, PowerHouse, did not meet its targeted sales volumes over the period and it is now clear it will take longer than originally expected to restructure the business and achieve profitability. However, positive progress is being made although trading losses for the year to 31 March 2004 will be in excess of what had been targeted. Looking forward we expect trading conditions to remain competitive, challenging and variable. In view of this, whilst the overall performance of the New Zealand based businesses remains satisfactory, the anticipated PowerHouse losses through its restructuring programmes mean that we expect the Group will record a loss for the full year. Also, the Directors are pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Steve Smith as a director to the Pacific Retail Group Board. Steve was until recently a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers specialising in investment banking and financial advisory services. His experience and skills will provide the Board with added expertise with regard to its strategies for managing and funding its range of investments.