MBL Group profits tumble

Home entertainment distributor MBL Group has posted a 78 per cent dip in profits for the six months ending September 30th.

Year-on-year profits dropped from 3.2m to 700,000, while revenues fell from 78.2m to 71.1m.

MBL distributes entertainment goods including games, DVDs and CDs to retailers such as Morrisons. It runs a white label website for Sainsbury’s and recenty launched online retailer www.bee.com.

In a statement the firm said: Trading continues to be challenging and management have further revised their expectations for the year.”

MBL chairman Peter Cowgill said: The Group’s strategy has been to diversify its underlying businesses and strengthen future revenue streams to reduce the impact of the dependency on its major customer, Wm Morrisons plc.

"The strategy has also been to recognise that the growth areas for home entertainment products reside within online and digital sales.

The Group has made significant investments in digital and online capability platforms and also in the underlying business infrastructure. We are now in a unique position to offer our business customers capability within the home entertainment sales markets of in-store, online and digital.”