'Subdued' recovery in demand hits tiling chain

TOPPS Tiles, the UK's biggest tile and flooring chain, has warned of "subdued" trading so far this year amid little sign of a revival in consumer confidence.

The group expects like-for-like sales will be up 2.1 per cent for the 27 weeks to April 2 – well below the 5.5 per cent growth seen after 14 weeks of the first half.

Shares in the firm slid eight per cent yesterday as chief executive Matt Williams said: "The results across the first half of the year demonstrate that levels of consumer confidence remain unstable and trading patterns during the second quarter have been subdued."

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Singer analyst Matthew McEachran estimated a 1.5 per cent fall in comparative sales since the beginning of 2010, with the winter snow also hitting the business.

"Adjusting for the extreme weather over two weeks of January like-for-like sales have been broadly flat," he added.

Mr McEachran added that lower expected sales growth this year could wipe as much as 3m from profit hopes, taking forecasts back to the 16.3m posted by Topps last year.