Upsurge in whitegoods sales and strong ‘Black Friday’.
The UK’s leading electrical retailer Dixons Carphone, has seen a 23% increase in profits before tax for the first half of the year. The interim results for the retail group showed pre-tax profits of £121 million in the six months to October 31, up from £98m in the same period the year before.
Group like-for-like growth in the first half was up 5% in all territories. However, pro-forma group revenue, taking currency fluctuations into account, was down 3% to £4.4 billion compared with £4.5bn for 2014/15.
The only region to show an increase in pro-forma revenue during that period was the UK and Ireland, where it was up from £2.81bn to £2.87bn.
It attributed this growth to an upsurge of sales of whitegoods, offsetting a fall in demand for tablets and PCs. TV sales, it said, “held up well”.
According to UK trade media ERT, Dixons Carphone also reported “strong Black Friday” sales and a growing market share and has also seen its new 4G mobile network iD secure 200,000 customers since its launch in April 2015.
Group chief executive Sebastian James explained, “This has been a very good first half for Dixons Carphone. Against a broadly flat market overall, and a very strong comparative period, we have seen continued like-for-like growth driven by market share gains across all territories.
“Our business in the UK and Ireland has had an impressive start to the year with 31% earnings growth. It is also great to see iD, our new MVNO, hitting the milestone of 200,000 subscribers to date.
“Across the board, we continue to see improved customer satisfaction and price competitiveness, which gives me confidence that our core business continues to be focused on the things that matter to our long-term future.
“Our integration continues to go well and it gives me real pleasure to see the business looking and feeling like a single unit. The vast majority of the difficult decisions have been made and implemented and we will complete this with the move of the Carphone Warehouse depot to Newark in the New Year. I think that, with nearly all the bigger changes done, we are now ready to settle into a more normal married life and to think about our business as a single Dixons Carphone entity.”
The Dixons Carphone Group was formed in August 2014 as part of a £3.8bn merger between Carphone Warehouse and Dixons.
The group will publish a trading update on January 26.