Starbucks’ reported months ago that it’s profits rose 24 percent to $391 million during its fiscal year ended September 2009. However, recent filings in the United Kingdom show it’s on the opposite trajectory there, losing more than $15 million during the same period, the Guardian of London reports.

The U.K. is one of Starbucks’ largest overseas markets, with 712 of its 16,635 locations, only surpassed by Canada and Japan. The Guardian suggests the business has been losing ground to strongly performing Costa Coffee, the rival chain owned by British leisure group Whitbread. Starbuck’s performance contrasts with figures from Costa which showed comparable sales growth of 3.9% for the 39 weeks to the end of November last year. Since then the pace of Costa growth has accelerated to 8.5%.

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The Guardian also speculates that Starbucks’ performance underlines concerns raised by chief executive Howard Schultz a year ago when he delivered a damning, off-the-cuff assessment of the UK economy. “The place that concerns us most is western Europe and, specifically, the UK,” he said. “The UK is in a spiral.”

Asked about his biggest concerns, Schultz said: “Unemployment, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, particularly in the UK, and I think consumer confidence, particularly in the UK, is very, very poor.”

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Tags: coffee news, Companies, Costa Coffee, Starbucks