Sunny spell melts Thorntons profits

THE arrival of warm weather in the summer may not be the biggest surprise for most people, but it seems to have caught chocolate maker Thorntons on the hop.

Its shares crashed 8% today as it warned the sunny run-up to Father's Day last month hit sales of chocs and toffees.

Profits for the year to 28 June will now fall £700,000 short of last year's £7.1m before tax, it warned in appalling trading statement just weeks after the group admitted to having had a poor Easter.

'Father's Day is our fifth-biggest selling season of the year,' explained chief executive Peter Burdon. 'People just do not shop on the High Street in this weather.'

Burdon was brought in to rescue the group three years ago after a host of profit warnings, blaming everything from the wrong colour chocolate and too many Easter eggs.

Like-for-like sales since the week before Easter this year seem to have fallen dramatically, turning year-on-year growth of 3.6% into an overall 0.3% decline for the half-year.

Burdon said he had now decided to spend more this summer advertising ice cream, but that promise was not enough to prevent the shares falling 7 1/2p to 116p.

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