Britain's top health and beauty product retailer Boots Group today warned on full-year profits as a slowdown in consumer spending hit trading at its main chemists chain and cost cutting fell short of expectations.
Boots, which said in January that operating profit at the Boots The Chemist (BTC) division was expected to be around £490-500m sterling, said it was now likely to fall short of that mark as its market had deteriorated.
'The company now expects full-year operating profits for Boots The Chemists to be in the range £465-475m reflecting the poorer outlook and slightly higher operating costs,' it said in a trading update.
A Boots spokesman said there had been no downturn in the number of customers and profit margins had remained intact, but a hoped-for increase in the value of the average spend had not materialised.
'We're still seeing the customers coming through the stores, but we were expecting and hoping that they would put something extra into their baskets and that just hasn't happened,' he said.
Boots has been cutting costs in stores and in its supply chain as it looks to invest the proceeds in lower prices, but the current soggy state of trading meant it had not been able to go as far as it had hoped, the spokesman added.
