Customers shop during the grand opening of a Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) store in Denver, Colorado, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011.
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H&M, the world's second-biggest clothing retailer, reported on Friday a 46% plunge in March sales as the coronavirus pandemic took its toll and said it expected to run a loss in its fiscal second quarter.
"The second quarter will naturally be very negatively impacted by the corona situation and will therefore be loss-making," the Swedish group said.
Fiscal first-quarter pretax profit more than doubled to 2.50 billion crowns ($247.6 million) from a year-ago 1.04 billion. Six analysts polled between March 17 and March 26 had on average expected a rise to 1.47 billion crowns, according to Refinitiv data.