Dixons Carphone ups profit forecast after Black Friday and Christmas trading success
Dixons Carphone has raised its profit forecast after a “roller coaster” Christmas proved a success for the retailer.
Full-year pre-tax profits are expected to come in at between £355m and £375m, ahead of expectations, after a seven per cent rise in like-for-like sales over the festive period, including eight per cent growth in the UK.
"The strange shape of this year's Christmas trading was something of a roller-coaster but I am very pleased with the end result,” said group chief executive Sebastian James.
"There is no doubt that the huge scale and success of our Black Friday promotion impacted the three weeks that followed, but it was good to see customers respond positively to the deals that we had on Boxing Day where we saw growth from our record-breaking numbers last year in both the UK and Nordics. Our availability, pricing, service and marketing were all achieving very strong performance and customer metrics, and this translated into growth in market share in all our key territories over the period,” added James."
The results are in stark contrast to fellow high-street retailers such as John Lewis who lamented the US-imported Black Friday, warning margins would take a hit from heavy discounting, while others failed to feel the impact of the shopping frenzy overall.
James also highlighted the changes in customers' buying habits and the lifecycle of product technologies: prepay phone sales continued to fall as people moved to contracts; laptops returned to growth while tablet sales fell sharply due to less innovation in the category; ultra high-definition TV sales showed "excellent growth" as customers traded in old for new technology.