Home Retail Group provided little comfort for investors on Thursday with news that its Homebase DIY business would face a write-down of “several hundreds of millions” as like-for-like sales at Argos showed their worst quarterly performance for nine years.

The carrying value of Homebase’s assets, including goodwill, is currently about £1bn, but will be assessed as part of a half-year audit review which is expected to lead to “substantial write-downs”.