Thorntons: Fourth Quarter Trading Update

16 July 2013 --- Thorntons reports its fourth quarter trading update for the ten weeks up to and including 29 June 2013, which demonstrates further progress in transforming the business.

As this quarter is a ten week period (last year nine weeks), the figures for 2012 have been adjusted to allow comparison.

- Total sales - Increase of 5.6% to £26.8 million.

- Commercial (FMCG) Division- Continued strong growth in the Commercial division which will become Thorntons' largest division by the end of the current financial year in line with the strategy to rebalance the business. The prospects for the International channel continue to be encouraging, although currently still a small proportion of overall sales.

- UK Commercial sales grew by 11.8% to £9.2 million.

- International sales more than doubled to £0.9 million.

- Private label sales increased to £0.7 million.

- Retail Division - Showed good progress towards the objective of creating a sustainable retail estate of 180-200 stores. The period saw positive like-for-like sales in Own Stores, a trend also reflected in the Franchise channel.

- Own Store like-for-like sales increased by 0.5%. Overall sales in Own Stores declined 3.8% to £13.9 million as a result of the 34 store closures during the year, in line with the Company's strategy.

- Franchise sales improved by £0.2 million to £1.3 million.

- Thorntons Direct sales decreased by £0.1 million to £0.8 million.

- As announced on 2 July 2013 we anticipate profit before tax, impairment and onerous lease charges for the full year to be ahead of current market expectations.*

Jonathan Hart, Thorntons' Chief Executive, commented: "I'm pleased to report further encouraging progress during the final quarter of our financial year. Despite being our smallest sales quarter we have continued to demonstrate the positive impact of our strategy and the strength of our brand.

"Our UK Commercial sales growth and market share remain strong and our Own Stores have now delivered positive like-for-like growth across the whole of the second half of this year. We are on track with our store closure programme and have refurbished seven stores to our new format in the period under review.

"The trading environment continues to be challenging. The actions we have taken are delivering positive results reflected by the progressive recovery in our profitability over the past 18 months."