June 20 - British menswear retailer Moss Bros said it had sold 8 of its 9 Cecil Gee stores to sportswear retailer JD Sports Fashion for 1.7 million pounds ($2.8 million) in cash.

Moss Bros

The remaining Cecil Gee store in Glasgow will be converted to a new format Moss store in the next few weeks.

The sale, along with the disposal of 15 Hugo Boss franchised stores earlier this year , will help the company focus on its core Moss business resulting in a much simpler business model, Moss Bros said in a statement.

With Cecil Gee's sale and strong trading to date, the company expects out turn for the full year to be ahead of current market expectations, the company said.

Analysts on average were expecting revenue of 108.8 million pounds for the year, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S data.

Excluding Cecil Gee, like-for-like sales for the 20 weeks ended June 18 were up 13.4 percent.

Shares of the company closed at 26 pence on Friday on the London Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Suzannah Benjamin in Bangalore; Editing by Roshni Menon)