Issuing its second profit warning today, Carpetright finally admitted that it had been in trading dilemma lately and it was expecting its earnings to get reduced to around the £17.2m level achieved in the 2009.

This official statement came after the floor covering specialist had already downgraded its expectations from £26m to around £20m at the beginning of February.

The firm is currently operating 584 stores in the UK & Ireland and 118 in the Netherlands and Belgium and the officials from the company stated that last month they were expecting pretax profits to be between the levels achieved in the previous two financial years.

The firm’s sales figure had its initial blow when most of the households put their major purchases on the hold due to uncertain economic climate and the situation went worse with the low level of mortgage approvals.

Freddie George, analyst at Seymour Pierce, observed a step-down in sales volumes in March and April and an increase in the level of discounting and markdown activity.

In addition, he said, “'While Carpetright has the cash generation to ride out this recession and has a dominant market position, the next 12 months is unlikely to be easy and the outlook could even deteriorate further if, as seems likely, interest rates are increased in the second quarter”.