UK bicycles to car parts retailer Halfords has today warned that profit for the current year would be flat after reporting a 5% fall for 2017-18, saying it would step-up investment in the business.
For the year to March 30, Halfords made an underlying pretax profit of £71.6m - in line with analysts' forecasts but down from £75.4m made in 2016-17.
Halfords said it anticipated the motoring market would remain robust and it continued to see good growth prospects for the cycling market.
But it added that it did not expect prices to rise in cycling this year as in the previous year.
"Given this, the phasing of our remaining foreign exchange mitigation actions and decisions to accelerate investment in services and customer capabilities, we currently anticipate FY19 underlying profit before tax to be broadly in line with FY18," it said.
Analysts' average forecast had been £76.5m.
