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Blaming “an extremely difficult trading environment”, David Jones Limited (ASX:DJS) has issued a profit warning for the first half of fiscal 2012.
The downgrade comes as department store posted a 10.3 per cent fall in sales for the last quarter of fiscal 2011.
DJ’s has confirmed that it expects its net profit in fiscal 2011 to fall by between 0.5 per cent and 2 per cent.
However, the company says its guidance for the first half of fiscal 2012, for a 15-20 per cent fall in profit after tax, was based on the assumption that there would be an improvement in fourth quarter sales for fiscal 2011.
To date, DJ’s says the first quarter of fiscal 2012 has shown no improvement from trading in the first quarter a year before.
In the six months to January 29, David Jones reported a net profit of $105.7 million for the first half of its 2011 financial year.
