Winter Chill for Retailers Left Counting Cost of Christmas

Summary

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How many of the country's retailers performed over the critical Christmas period will be unveiled this week with a raft of trading updates. Trading at music and books retailer HMV has been overshadowed by its difficulties in persuading regulators to allow it to take over bookseller Ottakar's for pounds 96.4m, but its interim results and update on Thursday will put the spotlight squarely on the recent performance of its stores.

Analysts are split on whether HMV will make any profits in the first half of its financial year, with Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) expecting the group to only break even and rival broker Deutsche Bank forecasting pre-tax profits of pounds 2.1m. Both estimates compare with pounds 10.5m a year ago.

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Extract

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Winter Chill for Retailers Left Counting Cost of Christmas

HMV has already revealed that like-for-like sales at its music stores were down 11.5% in the three months to September 24 and 8% lower at Waterstone's. This is a deterioration of earlier trends as its financia...

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