ONLINE fashion retailer Asos lost sales of between £25m and £30m following a serious fire at its main warehouse in June.

The fashion website was forced to suspend orders after the blaze in its Barnsley warehouse affected 20 per cent of stock contained in the five-storey building.

Adjusting for insurance proceeds, the company said it still expects profits for the year to August 31 to be in line with forecasts.

However, this comes after a difficult 2014, in which it has already issued two profit warnings.

Shares slumped 13 per cent in early trading yesterday as the retailer said there was unlikely to be a rebound in profits in the current financial year.

It said the performance would be held back by significant investment in its international pricing strategy, as well as in infrastructure and technology.

Freddie George, a retail analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, retained his forecast for lower profits of £46m in the year to last month, but also reduced his target for the year to August next year from £55m to £48m.

Mr George said: “There will inevitably be questions over the robustness of the company’s model, particularly its development strategy overseas.

“More worryingly perhaps, the company’s recent ‘damage limitation’ strategy has also, we believe, impacted the company’s entrepreneurial ethos and held back its evolution.”

Asos said UK trading remained strong over the final quarter of the year, with sales up 33 per cent compared with a year earlier.

Total sales for the group, which has websites in the US, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, Russia and China, were up 27 per cent over the year, at £975.5m.

Chief executive Nick Robertson said: “We remain focused on the long term opportunity for Asos, with £2.5bn of sales as our next staging post.”

Asos’ websites attract 71.2 million visits per month, while the company has 8.8 million active customers, of which 3.4m are in the UK.

It stocks more than 90,000 branded and own-brand products aimed at 20-something customers.