Frasers Group (LON: FRAS), formerly Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct, has announced preliminary results today – revealing a 20% slide in profits.
Delayed by a week, the lockdown store closures has led to a hit in sales for the group where pre-tax profits fell down from £179.2m to £143.5m.
Despite the fall in profits, revenue grew from £3.7bn in 2019 to £3.96bn – a rise of 6.9%. The rise in revenue was due to opening of new stores and Frasers Group’s purchase of Sofa.com and Jack Wills.
“We continued to follow the further demise of Debenhams during the year with much frustration and disappointment as it entered administration for a second time,” said the company in a statement.
“We raised our concerns and gave numerous warnings about what we were seeing there, much of which has materialised. Our offers of help were repeatedly disregarded and it is scandalous that this business has now been in administration twice.”
Shares in Frasers Groups (LON: FRAS) are trading +2.42% at 313,20 (0821GMT).