Dixons Carphone says Black Friday has taken root in Britain
By James Davey
LONDON (Reuters) - Black Friday is firmly entrenched in Britain, consumer electricals and mobile phone retailer Dixons Carphone said, though many opted to shop online this year rather than head to the shops for the United States imported discount event.
Despite lower shopper numbers in stores overall, Black Friday this year, which fell on Nov. 27, still delivered Dixons Carphone's best ever trading day.
"Our prediction would be that it's reasonably firmly entrenched in this market now," finance chief Humphrey Singer told reporters on Wednesday.
"We like this start to the season that we have for our business, so in that sense long may it continue."
Analysts argue that Black Friday discounts pull forward Christmas sales that store groups would otherwise have made at full price and can dampen business in subsequent weeks.
Dixons Carphone says carefully planned targeted promotions with global suppliers allows it to achieve a sales boost while maintaining profit margins.
"It's a Christmas now with two peaks and in between the two peaks there will be a valley. We're now in that valley," said Singer. "We had a record Boxing Day last year and we're looking forward to doing the same again."
This year's Black Friday promotion, so named because the pick up in spending would traditionally move U.S. retailers into the black from the red, showed a different pattern from 2014.
Online retailer Amazon UK and John Lewis [JLP.UL], Britain's biggest department store group, also had their busiest ever trading days.
But for sales in British stores, Black Friday disappointed. Accountancy and business advisory firm BDO LLP said its monthly high street sales tracker recorded a 4.3 percent drop in year-on-year sales for November.
Last year's Black Friday had been characterised by frenzied shopper activity in stores.
Singer was speaking after Dixons Carphone, which trades as Currys, PC World and Carphone Warehouse in the UK and Ireland, Elkjop and El Giganten in Nordic countries and Kotsovolos in Greece, beat forecasts with a 23 percent rise in first-half profit, sending its shares up to 5 percent higher.
It made an underlying pretax profit of 121 million pounds in the 26 weeks to Oct. 31, ahead of analysts' average forecast of 111 million pounds, on revenue of 4.39 billion pounds.
Group sales at stores open for more than a year rose 5 percent, driven by a 7 percent rise in the UK & Ireland, where the firm gained market share.
Dixons Carphone announced changes to its board, with the addition of the former CEO of BT Ian Livingstone as deputy chairman and Tony DeNunzio, the former head of Asda as senior independent director. Roger Taylor, the former CEO of Carphone Warehouse, has left the business.
Shares in the firm, which increased its interim dividend by 30 percent to 3.25 pence, have risen 14.7 percent over the last year and were up 13.2 pence at 489.9 pence at 1043 GMT, valuing the business at 5.7 billion pounds.
(Editing by Kate Holton and Louise Heavens)
