Tommy Martin

Burberry First Half Profit Off, Sales Up

Yesterday, Burberry announced that profit slumped 24 percent for the first half of the current financial year, and blamed it to weaker international wholesale sales and the closure of underperforming stores.

Burberry, using its latest formula to express profit, announced that “attributable profit” fell to 56.8 million pounds, or $95.3 million at current exchange rates, for the six months that ended Sept. 30, 2009.

Sales advanced in the same period to 572.4 million pounds, or $960 million, a six percent rise on the like period in 2008, according to interim figures released in London.

Due to the weaker profit performance, the company’s earnings per share fell by 11 percent, but Burberry nonetheless upped its interim dividend by 4 percent to 3.50 pounds, or $5.88.

In an address streamed on the company’s own Web site, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts trumpeted the fact that “comp sales,” or comparable-store sales - a measurement used by analysts to rate the productivity of a retail business - had risen 2 percent in the last half.

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