British clothing retailer Marks & Spencer posted a 19 per cent fall in profit today and said it was still losing market share.
Pretax profit at the high-street icon dropped to £618.5 million (€899 million), marginally ahead of analysts' mean forecast.
Chief Executive Stuart Rose, brought in a year ago to fight off a hostile 400-pence-per-share indicated bid from billionaire entrepreneur Philip Green, said the performance was disappointing despite the progress that had been made.
"The outlook remains challenging, with tough economic and competitive conditions expected to continue," Mr Rose said, although he did not update the market on trading conditions since the April 2nd end of its financial year.
M&S said its all-important clothing market share in the United Kingdom had fallen 0.5 percentage points to 10.5 per cent, although one encouraging sign was that in-store footfall and clothing volumes were both up on the year.
Food sales were up 2.4 per cent on the previous year, but like-for-like sales dropped 2.6 per cent as supermarket groups began to compete more effectively with M&S's high-quality grocery ranges.
Shares in Marks & Spencer, which have underperformed on the London benchmark FTSE-100 index by 5.5 per cent this year, closed yesterday at 337p.