Under-pressure Dr Martens delivered a very brief trading update on Thursday to coincide with its Annual General Meeting and it does’t seem to have seen an upturn since it last shared its performance progress.

It said trading since the start of this financial year “has been in line with expectations and our guidance for FY25 remains unchanged. As always, Q1 is the smallest period of our financial year, representing the end of the Spring/Summer season. As communicated in our recent FY24 results, the current financial year will be very second-half weighted, particularly from a profit perspective”.  

The upcoming AW24 season remains a key focus and “detailed trading plans, as discussed in our recent FY24 results, are being implemented. We continue to target positive DTC growth in the USA in H2. Work on our cost action plan is ongoing and we will provide a detailed update at our first half results in November”.

So what did the firm’s earlier guidance — to which it’s now sticking — tell us? Well, back in April it had said that for the first half, it expects a group revenue decline of around 20%, driven by wholesale revenues down around a third. 

It also said that US wholesale revenue in particular is anticipated to be down in double-digits and at the pre-tax profit level “we could see a worst-case scenario of around one-third of the FY24 level. There are also scenarios where the profit outturn could be significantly better than this, with the key factor being if USA performance is stronger than our planning assumptions as we progress through the year”.