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Blacks Leisure's outdoor clothing and camping stores showed signs of a slight recovery today but the dire performance of its surfing and snowboarding chains dragged the retailer deeper into the red.
The company behind the O'Neill, Milletts and Blacks chains posted a pre-tax loss of £14.4 million for the year to the end of February, having lost £9.3 million the previous year. Restructuring costs and a string of write-downs accounted for more than half the losses.
But like-for-like sales rose 1.2% in the 12 weeks to 23 May at its Millets and Blacks outlets, indicating that chief executive Neil Gillis's turnaround plans are starting to work. The hot weather also helped.
Comparable sales at Freespirit and O'Neill fell by more than a tenth in the same period. Gillis admits that "boardwear" has had its day, and has converted eight of the stores into outdoor shops.
Last week, Blacks extended its £35million facility with Lloyds Banking Group to the end of August. It remains in talks about a longer-term facility which would allow it to accelerate its exit from boardwear.
Blacks, whose biggest shareholder is Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley, scrapped the final dividend to conserve cash.
