Discount retailer Shoe Zone says it will have taken a £12 million hit – if not more – following the second lockdown.
It said the four week lockdown in England, a month before Christmas, had affected it at the busiest time in its year.
Its new financial year, which started in early October, would be millions of pounds down.
Shares in the Leicester-headquartered business were briefly down more than 20 per cent this morning on the back of an announcement to the Stock Exchange.
By 9am they were down about 10 per cent at 55p.
A month ago the business said it was considering getting rid of 20 per cent of its store estate, putting hundreds of jobs at risk.
Back then chief executive Anthony Smith said he planned to close 45 shops within the next five months and a further 45 over the following year.
Shoe Zone has already closed 40 shops this year, but opened 10 more of its out-of-town Big Box stores, taking the total number of new style bigger retail park stores to 50.
The business employs 3,000 people and even prior to the second lockdown warned sales from its 410 shops were down a fifth since they reopened the first time in June.
Even a doubling of on-line sales had failed to fill the gap, with pre-tax losses of more than £10 million expected for the last financial year.
In a statement issued today Shoe Zone said: “As should be expected, the second lockdown in England at a critical time of year will have a negative impact on the group’s revenue in the current financial year, resulting in an anticipated reduction in revenue of at least £12 million compared to the year ending October 5, 2020, even allowing for the good gains in online trade.
“The very late lockdown in certain areas of Scotland and all of Northern Ireland has further exacerbated the impact on our pre-Christmas trading.
“Notwithstanding this anticipated reduction in revenue, the group continues to have a material net cash balance sheet position, and the board continues to anticipate that the group has sufficient liquidity available to it, assuming there are no further material Covid-19 related restrictions mandated by the Government over and above those already known.
“It is very difficult at this stage to provide any further meaningful guidance on the future outlook, given the material uncertainty in the wider economy.”
Typically, Shoe Zone sells 16 million pairs of shoes a year at an average retail price of £11.
