Dixons Carphone is finding itself rather flush in the run up to Christmas, and might even be able to afford to buy its staff a celebratory mince pie.
The numbers for the period up to 31 October show revenue increased up five per cent year-on-year to £4.39 billion and up three percent on what was expected.
The company was formed last year from the merger of Dixons and Carphone Warehouse and it has seen its rivals suffer badly in the months that followed. Not so for Dixons Carphone.
UK and Ireland markets grew two percent to £2.87 billion and the Nordics edged up one percent to £1.19 billion. The only dark spot was Southern Europe fell six percent to £257 million, but this was related to the weakness of the Euro rather than sales problems.
CEO Sebastian James said the market was flat but his company saw like-for-like growth driven by market share gains across all territories.
The British stores saw cost and what Dixons Carphone claims were “synergy savings” when it closed the Dixons HQ in Hemel Hempstead. White goods offset a “fall in demand” for tablets and PCs. The mobile business mopped up some share, it said.
A “strong” Black Friday was a decent opening to the Christmas sales season, the CEO said.
DixCar made “progress” on “price-matching” against the local Nordics retailers but this, coupled with forex pressures, had “inevitably had some impact on margins” there.
Pre-tax profit was up 35 percent to £135 million, but after finance costs and losses from discontinued operations, net profit for the year was £86 million, compared with £46 million a year ago
