Fashion retailer H&M has today reported a 34% fall in quarterly profit as its core brand's stores attracted fewer shoppers.
H&M said it might ask investors to reinvest dividends to help finance investments.
Following decades of rapid expansion, the world's second-biggest clothes group after Zara owner Inditex has struggled to respond as shoppers move online and competition intensifies.
Its shares have been in retreat for three years.
The company said its pre-tax profit in the three months to November, H&M's fiscal fourth quarter, shrank to 4.9 billion Swedish crowns, better than the mean forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts for 4.72 billion.
H&M had said in December that sales in the quarter unexpectedly fell, triggering a dramatic sell-off in its shares as well as large profit estimate cuts and stock target price cuts by analysts.
"The industry changes are challenging everyone and this will continue in 2018", chief executive Karl-Johan Persson said in a statement,
He added that H&M does not expect to reach a target of local-currency sales growth of 10-15% this year.
H&M, which has launched a number of independent higher-end brands in recent years to broaden its customer base, said it would in 2018 launch one more, offering budget products from external brands as well as its own brands.
It also said it would start selling the H&M and H&M Home brands on e-commerce platform Tmall in March.
H&M said price cuts to shift unsold goods increased in the quarter. Inventories, which have been growing over the past two years, were also up again.
