Carpetright gets it wrong on profits – yet again

The floor-covering specialist Carpetright issued its ninth profits downgrade in 18 months yesterday, and warned it saw no respite over the next year from the brutal slowdown in consumer spending.

Carpetright, which has 643 stores in the UK and abroad, pulled no punches when it described trading as "volatile" from one week to the next, saying customers were waiting for promotional discounts before spending.

After a 6.8 per cent fall in like-for-like sales over the past 12 weeks, the group warned that it now expects full-year, pre-tax profit to be at the lower end of City expectations, of between £16.9m and £11.8m. The former was its actual profit figure in the year ending 30 April 2011.