Simply Be owner N Brown Group has said revenue will be held back in the short term as it focuses on core brands and online sales.
The group, which also owns Jacamo and JD Williams, said a drop in offline sales and weak international performance were to blame for a 3.1% decline in product revenue in the first half of the year.
This decline is expected to continue as the group shifts to focus on its core "power brands" and online growth.
Total revenue was up 1% to £457.8 million thanks to growth in the group's financial services.
Adjusted profit before tax dropped 5% to £30.6 million, coming in slightly ahead of market expectations.
Steve Johnson, who is acting as interim chief executive following the abrupt departure of previous boss Angela Spindler in September, said the "ongoing decline of our legacy offline business and challenging market conditions" had affected product revenue.
"Going forward, we expect offline sales to continue to fall as we focus on online power brand growth," he said.
"While this will hold back revenue in the short term, there are opportunities to drive profit particularly through improved efficiency, as the business further shifts online, and we accelerate the use of analytics to increase returns on our promotional spend."
N Brown slashed its dividend in half to a "more sustainable level" of 2.83p per share.
Shares in N Brown dropped 24.2% to 105.1p in morning trading on Thursday.
The group made a statutory loss before tax of £27.1 million due to exceptional costs of £65.4 million. This includes a £22.4 million cash charge as a result of paying out against PPI claims.
"N Brown is taking some decisive actions under the leadership of interim CEO Steve Johnson," said analysts at Jefferies. But they added it was likely the stock would be in limbo until the appointment of a new chief executive.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here