Bargain retailer B&M has announced a "strategic review" of its German operations after a "disappointing" financial performance - despite reporting a strong first half in the UK.
At the time of writing, shares in the Liverpool -based firm had dropped by around 7%, after the entire organisation's profit before tax dropped by over 70%.
Despite the disappointing German results - which the company said was due to "distribution issues and weak sales performance", the UK stores' business revenue increased by 13.8%, with the firm adamant it's still on track to open 46 net new B&Ms this financial year.
Total group revenues also rose by over 21% to £1.9bn.
Simon Arora, chief executive of the firm, said performances of its French leg Babou and its German Jawoll were "contrasting", with the results for the six months to September 28.
He explained: "Babou has made good progress with the planned changes to its product offer.
"The performance of Jawoll has continued to be impacted by trading and operational issues and its financial performance remains disappointing.
"The Board is carrying out a strategic review of Jawoll in order to determine its future.”
The poor Jawoll performance meant a £59.5m impairment, the firm revealed in its interim results on Tuesday morning.
Speaking about the positive UK results, Mr Arora said: “We have delivered a solid overall first half performance driven by our core B&M UK stores business which constitutes 86% of group sales. Our existing stores performed consistently well through the last two quarters, generating half year LFL3 of 3.7%.
"The current crop of new stores also achieved especially strong results. The core business has made a solid start to the second half of the financial year.
"Heron Foods has continued to grow in the UK and we remain very pleased with the overall progress of that business."
Mr Arora added that the firm was "well placed for the golden quarter" in its main UK business, adding: "Despite the continued uncertainty in the economic environment generally, we are very proud to say that each of the top five store opening days in our history have all been in stores we have opened in the last 12 months."
