Dixons Carphone enjoys 7 boost in Christmas sales

Dixons Carphone enjoyed a seven per cent boost in like-for-like sales over the traditionally busy Christmas period.

The company, formed through a merger of Currys, PC World and Carphone Warehouse in 2014, explained that the festive period was somewhat of a "rollercoaster" but it had performed well overall. Like-for-like sales grew during the nine weeks to January allowing the firm to predict higher-than-expected profit of between £355 million and £375 million for the full year, up from the previous forecast of £354 million.

Following its merger in August, Dixons Carphone stated in September that it had made "a good start" to life as a new entity. Sebastian James, group chief executive, explained at the time that the company looked to be "in excellent shape" to take on any challenges that could occur during its lifetime.

Like a number of other retailers, Dixons Carphone was boosted by the emergence of a special shopping events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Mr James said that the success of the company's Black Friday promotion had an effect on the following three weeks in the build-up to Christmas. However, customers were said to have responded well to the Boxing Day deals.

Mr James added: "The strange shape of this year’s Christmas trading was something of a roller-coaster but I am very pleased with the end result.

"In all of our largest trading markets we have excellent like-for-like performance against fairly tough comparables. At the same time, we have also experienced stable gross margin."

Dixons Carphone managed to perform well over the Christmas period when many other retailers had faltered. The supermarket sector has bore the brunt of poor performance with the likes of Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury's all reporting drops in sales. Waitrose, in contrast, enjoyed a positive Christmas period with a boost in sales.

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