The Manchester-headquartered fashion giant behind the likes of Jacamo, Simply Be and JD Williams lost more than £100m in revenue and saw its pre-tax profits almost half during its latest financial year. However, its CEO has said he is "beginning to see some early signs of progress".
N Brown Group, whose brands also include Home Essentials and Ambrose Wilson, has reported a revenue of £728.8m for the 12 months to February 27, 2021, down from £837.5m during the prior year.
The AIM-listed group's pre-tax profits also declined from £31.m to £18.5m over the same period.
During the financial year N Brown successfully completed a £100m equity raising to "accelerate its strategic transformation" and eliminate unsecured debt while it also moved to the Alternative Investment Market in December 2020.
Chief executive Steve Johnson said: "In a year where we have all had to overcome multiple challenges, we have continued our transformation of the group through a relentless focus on our five strategic brands, improving our product offering and enhancing our digital capabilities, all of which will position us better with our target customers.
"Although we remain cautious, we are beginning to see some early signs of progress.
"Our capital raise has enabled us to strengthen our balance sheet and allows us to accelerate our investment into strategic initiatives, particularly our digital platform and brand websites.
"Whilst wider consumer dynamics remain uncertain as we emerge from lockdown, we have significantly transformed the shape of the business from where it was at the start of the pandemic.
"I would like to thank every single one of our colleagues for helping us make those changes at pace, whilst delivering a very high standard of service to our customers through very difficult times."
The company added: "FY21 was a year of significant strategic progress and the business is in a much stronger position than it was at the start of the pandemic.
"We are heartened by the strategic progress we have made; however we remain cautious on the external environment given the uncertainty around the relaxing of the government restrictions and the end of the furlough scheme.
"We are confident that our strategy is the right one and we have demonstrated throughout the year that we have a flexible and agile business model which is able to react swiftly to the external environment and deliver for our customers.
"We remain committed to our medium-term targets of 7% product revenue growth per annum and a 14% adjusted EBITDA margin. Achieving these will deliver sustainable returns for shareholders."
