SIG slips to FY loss

The company, which primarily operates in 11 countries in Europe, said on Thursday it estimated it lost around 30 million pounds in sales in the first two months of 2010 due to bad weather.

"The extreme cold weather conditions and snow experienced across the UK and mainland Europe in January and February have resulted in a particularly slow start to trading in 2010," Chairman Les Tench said in a statement.

For the year ended December 31, the company reported a pretax loss of 55.3 million pounds, compared with a profit of 33.1 million pounds last year. Underlying pretax profit fell 56 percent to 60.6 million pounds.

Revenue fell 10 percent to 2.74 billion pounds, while like-for-like sales were down 11.6 percent.

The company said it was not proposing a final dividend for 2009.

SIG shares closed at 127.40 pence on Wednesday on the London Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Tresa Sherin Morera in Bangalore; Editing by Anne Pallivathuckal)