Travel recovery boosts WH Smith profits

Retailer WH Smith posted jump in full-year profit and revenue on Thursday as it continues to benefit from a recovery in travel.

In the year to the end of August, headline profit before tax and non-underlying items surged 96% to £143m. Group revenue was 28% higher at £1.8bn.

Travel trading profit rose to £164m from £89m a year earlier, while high street profit ticked down to £32m from £33m.

Total travel revenues were up 43% at £1.3bn. Revenue from the UK travel business jumped 36% to £709m, while North America saw a 32% increase to £380m. Rest of world travel revenues surged 99% to £235m.

Chief executive Carl Cowling said: "This has been another year of significant progress for the group.

"Our global travel business is growing in all our key markets. It is highly scalable with multiple medium and long-term growth opportunities and we are seeing great results from sharing our expertise and innovation across our different geographies.

"Our North American business is benefitting from our forensic approach to space management which has always been a key feature of our UK Travel operations. In the same way, the ability of our North American business to provide bespoke retail formats is now being successfully harnessed outside of the US."