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UK bootmaker Dr Martens has warned that annual profits will miss expectations and scrapped its revenue forecasts for next year as a slowdown in the US market deepens.
The company said a recovery in the US, where the company has been beset by a series of distribution and marketing issues over the past year, would now take longer than anticipated.
Chief executive Kenny Wilson said there was “an increasingly difficult consumer environment” in America.
As a result, group earnings in the current financial year would be “moderately below” the bottom end of the range expected by analysts. With the picture in the US worsening, Dr Martens said it was dropping its previous forecast that revenues would grow in the “high single-digits” in its next financial year.
Shares in the group tumbled 20 per cent in early trading, taking their drop since the company went public in 2021 to 69 per cent.
Once a favourite of youth subcultures and heavy metal music fans, Dr Martens has become a mainstream bootmaker with its styles as likely to be seen paired with a suit as with ripped jeans.
UK private equity firm Permira bought Dr Martens for £300m in 2014 and has sold down some of its stake since the initial public offering.
