Low Christmas sales made British retail giant Marks & Spencer lower their profit guidance, reports fibre2fashion.com. During the six-week Christmas trading period the sales of a London-based fell 9 percent and home sales 23.3 percent resulting in an overall drop in like-for-like sales for the two divisions of 5.6 percent.

” Although we still have three months of trading ahead of us until the end of this current financial year, given our third quarter performance, and in particular the impact of higher markdown costs, we now expect profit before tax and exceptional items for the current year will be in the range of ?600 million (€854.2m) to ?625 million.”, Marks & Spencer, who previously forecast pre-tax profit of ?680 million to ?700 million said in a statement.