Dixons Carphone’s online sales rise 166% in five weeks

Online sales at Dixons Carphone surged by 166 per cent in the five weeks to 25 April, as Britons stocked up on lockdown essentials like home office gear, cookware and entertainment.

The FTSE-250 listed retailer’s share price jumped over 19 per cent this morning after the group revealed its online trading recovered around two-thirds of its lost UK in-store sales. 

Products like breadmakers, fridges, computers, fitness trackers, games and televisions have sold ‘particularly well’ over the last few weeks. 

Despite a recent upturn in sales, the electricals retailer has cancelled its full-year dividend for shareholders. 

The group said: ‘Dividend payments will not be resumed until our standby debt facilities have been cancelled, which can be done at any time and is something we would plan to do when there is more certainty over the future.’

Dixons Carphone has furloughed 16,500 people across its operations under the Government’s Job Retention Scheme.

The company said: ‘All UK&I furloughed colleagues will be paid at 80% of their salary, with the company making up any difference beyond the Government subsidy limits.’ 

All of the retailer’s top brass have taken a 20 per cent pay cut and other senior leaders have taken a 10 per cent pay reduction, the chain said. None of the top executives in the UK and Ireland will get a bonus payment this year.

Dixons Carphone has extended its borrowing facilities and now has access to over £1.3billion worth of borrowing. The chain insisted it was in a ‘robust position.’

The group said its net debt for the year looks set to come in at the £300million mark. 

Across the UK and Ireland, Dixons Carphone’s like-for-like sales have fallen by 16 per cent in the last few weeks, but online sales have rocketed by 166 per cent, reflecting a surge in demand for products like computers, gaming and TV products.  

International like-for-like sales have risen 16 per cent in the last five weeks, with the Nordics and Greece seeing growth of 24 per cent and minus 40 per cent respectively.

The group’s stores in the UK, Ireland and Greece remain temporaily closed, but would have been expected to contribute around £400million in sales this year.

Dixons Carphone said it had maintained its ‘unambiguous price promise’, continued to invest in its delivery services and continued to boost the number of products it stocked. 

Chief executive Alex Baldock said: ‘We’re being prudent in conserving cash, have secured additional funding, and can plan for the future with confidence.

‘We remain committed to our longer-term transformation and will use everything we’re learning through this crisis to build a better business for customers, colleagues and shareholders.’

On Sunday, Baldock warned that some sales that have shifted online during the lockdown will never return to bricks-and-mortar stores.

He said he was preparing to open stores with ‘extreme care’.