Seb James, Dixons Carphone plc (LON:DC) Group Chief Executive, said: “I am pleased to be reporting another good Christmas period of growth – our fifth consecutive year. At a time of significant political uncertainty around the world, it was heartening to see that customers were choosing to enjoy the benefits that new technologies could bring to their lives during this holiday season. This year, as a result of our scale in all of our markets, we were able to offer prices that were truly ground-breaking during both our Black Friday week and our annual Boxing Day week sales – while maintaining margins – and we believe that we have outperformed the market during the period. As a result, and despite the fact that there is quite a bit of the year to go, we anticipate a meaningful uplift in year-on-year profitability this year over last and confirm our outlook in line with market consensus at £475m-£495m of headline profit before tax for the year ending 29 April 2017.
It was interesting to see the shape of peak trading this year: Black Friday was our biggest ever across the Group and in the UK we saw trading stretch further across the week as well. Customers across the Nordics have taken Black Friday truly to their hearts, although the Nordic market was a little quieter than normal across the period. The Nordic team took the decision to optimise margins which were up year-on-year as a consequence. In all markets it was a strong year online with significant growth, including white goods. Patchy availability of the larger, higher margin phones and tablets made these categories tougher this year but – on the other hand – offers up opportunities for next year where we do not expect the same issues. Large screen TV, in our view a bellweather for consumer sentiment, showed a solid performance over peak in all markets which we were glad to see. Finally, the Knowhow trial in Leeds is achieving fantastic net promotor scores and we are also delighted to welcome a very experienced and senior CEO for this division, Feilim Mackle, with a remit to transform and grow our successful services proposition.
Generating a successful Christmas means starting planning in January, and the teams are already hard at work making sure that our next Christmas season will be even better. I would like to thank my remarkable, hard-working and resilient colleagues for the time and effort that they have put in over this holiday period to achieve these results. I am very proud to be a part of this great company, as we look forward to another year of innovation and growth.”
| Trading update (10 weeks ended 7 January 2017) | |||
| Q3 2016/17 revenue | Year-on-year | Year-on-year local currency | Like-for-like1 |
| Sterling | |||
| UK & Ireland | 4% | 3% | 6% |
| Nordics | 15% | 1% | -1% |
| Southern Europe | 24% | 6% | 5% |
| CWS | 38% | 34% | n/a |
| Group | 8% | 3% | 4% |
[1] Like-for-like revenues are calculated based on Headline store and internet sales using constant exchange rates. New stores are included where they have been open for a full financial year both at the beginning and end of the financial period. Revenues from franchise stores are excluded and closed stores are excluded for any period of closure during either period. Customer support agreement, insurance and wholesale revenues along with revenue from Connected World Services and other non-retail businesses are excluded from like-for-like calculations. Revenues from Carphone Warehouse stores-within-a-store are included in like-for-like
Next announcement
The Group will publish its Q4 trading update on Wednesday 24 May 2017.
Note:
In the UK & Ireland, like-for-like revenue improved by approximately 4% as a result of sales transferred from closed stores. This mainly affected
UK&I electricals, where year-on-year sales for these products were +5% with like-for-like revenue at +9%. We anticipate that this programme will
be substantially complete by the end of the current financial year.
