Dixons Carphone delivers Christmas of growth

Dixons Carphone posted its fifth consecutive year of Christmas growth on Tuesday, with revenue ahead 4% on a like-for-like basis for the 10 weeks to 7 January.

The FTSE 100 electronics retail group saw revenues surge 6% in the UK and Ireland, and by 5% in Southern Europe.

Revenues were down, however, by 1% in its Nordics region.

I am pleased to be reporting another good Christmas period of growth - our fifth consecutive year,” said group chief executive Seb James.

“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.”

James said during the year, as a result of the company’s scale in all of its markets, it was able to offer prices that were “truly ground-breaking” during both its Black Friday week and the annual Boxing Day week sales - while maintaining margins - and it believes that it has 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.”

James explained that customers across the Nordics have taken Black Friday to heart, 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.”

He said patchy availability of the larger, higher margin phones and tablets made the categories tougher this year but also offered up opportunities for next year where the company does not expect the same issues.

“Large screen TV, in our view a bellwether 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.”

James added that generating a successful Christmas means starting planning in January, and the teams were already “hard at work” making sure 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.”