Carphone Warehouse reports sales rise
Carphone Warehouse today emerged as one of the retail sector’s success stories over Christmas after figures showed an 11.2% leap in same-store sales.
The company, which opened its first stores outside the UK in Dublin and Paris in 1996, now operates in 10 countries and has more than 1,300 stores.
Shares in the phone specialist jumped 5% following the trading update, which also featured a positive performance for its TalkTalk fixed line business. It added that annual results would be ahead of market expectations.
Chief executive Charles Dunstone said: “These figures represent a further period of strong growth. Our stores traded well and we achieved like-for-like growth despite an excellent Christmas last year.”
Carphone said total sales at its 1,424-strong retail estate were 24.9% higher in 13 weeks to December 25, with the figure excluding new stores up 11.2%.
It said the mobile phone market had been healthy over Christmas, helped by demand for pre-pay offers and good handset availability.
Mr Dunstone said he expected further progress as mobile networks competed for customers and more people migrated to state-of-the-art 3G services.
He also forecast further progress for the TalkTalk business, which added 114,000 more UK customers in the third quarter. The total customer base is now at 762,000 and helped revenues from fixed-line operations to improve by 58% to £99.7m (€142.2m) in the 13 week period.
TalkTalk operations in Spain, France, Germany and Switzerland were said to have made steady progress since their launch while Carphone has been encouraged by the initial response to its broadband service in the UK.
The company added 95 stores to its portfolio in the third quarter, meaning it reached its target of 200 openings in the financial year ahead of schedule. It anticipates a further 20 to 30 new outlets by the end of March.
Today’s update led Nick Bubb of Evolution Securities to raise his profits forecast for the full year to £102m (€145.5m), from £97m (€138.3m) previously. He has pencilled in profits of £120m (€171.1m) for the following year.
