Mobile telephone retailer Carphone Warehouse has warned its full-year earnings could fall ten per cent below predicted levels, despite taking more of the UK market.
Carphone's UK shops produced a resilient pre-Christmas performance, with third quarter like-for-like revenues down five per cent on last year's strong showing.
But the company, which has three shops in Oxford and one in Banbury, said it had been hurt by a shortfall in connection numbers in Germany, Belgium and Holland.
As a result, full-year earnings before tax and other one-off items are now expected fall below market expectations.
In the UK Carphone completed 661,000 connections in the 13 weeks to December 29, compared with 687,000 a year earlier.
Chief executive Charles Dunstone said its UK market share had now risen to 20 per cent from about nine per cent a year ago. Slower sales have been caused by a fall in demand for pre-paid phones after operators cut subsidies for such phones last May.
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