Electrical goods retailer DSG International said its annual profit would miss analysts' forecasts by as much as £50 million after poor Christmas trading.
The group, whose store chains include Currys and PC World, said like-for-like sales fell 1 per cent in the 11 weeks to December 29th, hit by an 11 per cent drop in sales of computing goods and tough trading in Britain, Italy and Spain.
A DSG spokeswoman said analysts had been expecting DSG to make a pretax profit of between £300 million and £320 million in the year to end-April.
DSG said like-for-like gross margins - a measure of profitability - fell 30 basis points as it used promotions in an attempt to offset a slowdown in consumer spending growth.