egolinews.com

Premier Investments Limited (PMV), owners of the Just Jeans brand, reported a 13.7% fall in profit to $42.4 million for the half-year ended 30 January. Looking ahead, Premier Investments said it was cautiously optimistic about achieving ‘acceptable margin growth’ in the second half of the year, given the company’s strong brand.

However, given what Premier Investments said was a ‘challenging’ environment for retailers, including the prospect of ongoing interest rate rises, the group declined to forecast earnings figures for the second half of the year.

Supporting the group’s optimism, Premier Investments said it had $325.5 million cash in the bank and had reduced debt by around $45 million in the last year to $75.4 million.

Looking at the result for the last six months, Premier noted that its 1H2010 comprised 27 weeks, with 1H2009 being 29 weeks and 5 days, as Premier moved its year end to 25 July 2009, in line with Just Group’s year end.

Chairman, Solomon Lew, said the excellent results had been posted by Just Jeans, Dotti and Smiggle.

On the downside, the company described the result by Portmans as ‘very disappointing’.

Excluding Portmans, the group reported like-for-like sales up 4.7%, whereas including Portmans, like-for-like sales were up a more modest 1.1%.

Just Group’s sales for the 27 weeks to 30 January 2010 were up a strong 9.3% on 1H2009 to $473 million, the company said.

“Building on the momentum produced by the leadership team at Just Group, Premier will be focusing on achieving consistent out-performance across all Just Group brands, with particular attention to lifting Portmans’ performance to match the returns from other brands in the portfolio,” Mr Lew said.

The board declared a dividend of 39c per share, including a 20c per share special dividend.

At the close Friday, Premier Investment shares were trading at $9.01.

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