Following today’s release of Card Factory’s results for the year ending 31 January 2026; Charlotte Chilcott, retail analyst at GlobalData, a leading intelligence and productivity platform, offers her view: “Card Factory’s full-year performance confirmed that the group is successfully growing beyond its UK stores but highlighted that a soft high street backdrop continues to weigh on like-for-like momentum and profit delivery. Total group revenue rose 7.4% to £582.7m in FY2025/26, with growth driven by store openings, partnerships and M&A rather than a recovery in underlying store demand. This weakness in the core estate fed through to earnings, with adjusted profit before tax down 15.2% to £56.0m (FY25: £66.0m). This outcome came in at the lower end of management’s revised £55–60m range but broadly aligned with market expectations. Management has stated its ‘Simplify & Scale’ programme continued to mitigate a significant proportion of cost inflation, but this could not counter balance the effect of weaker store transaction volumes during the peak trading season.
“Total store sales increased by 1.5%, while like-for-like store sales slipped by 0.2%. Softer high street footfall, particularly in the second half, weighed on underlying store performance. The profit warning issued during the peak Christmas period also underlined how sensitive profits remain to any deterioration in festive footfall. Like-for-like cards sales fell 0.9% and gifts declined 1.9%, while celebration essentials grew 1.7%. This reflects the continued structural shift away from physical card sending, which has been weighing on the category for some time. More notably, the sluggish performance in gifts and celebration essentials marks a slowdown in areas that have previously provided stronger growth (FY2024/25 +5.7%). To build growth, Card Factory must continue to develop gifting and celebration ranges around value-led products, as consumers under cost-of-living pressure increasingly favour small, affordable gestures.
“Digital sales accelerated sharply to £20.6m, with the group’s acquisition of Funky Pigeon significantly boosting sales, contributing £13.5m. This materially strengthens Card Factory’s personalised card and gifting capability, improving its position against online competitors such as Moonpig, and is helping to move the digital channel forward at pace. However, cardfactory.co.uk declined year-on-year highlighting the retailer’s continued struggle to build its own profitable digital channel.
“The clearest area of progress came from the group’s partnerships, which continued to scale rapidly. Wholesale partnerships revenue rose to £47.2m (FY25: £22.2m), reinforcing the value of leveraging Card Factory’s product and sourcing capability through third parties. Combined with the contribution from acquisitions and a larger digital footprint via Funky Pigeon, the group is steadily reducing its reliance on UK high street footfall, although the outlook for profits will remain constrained until like-for-like store performance shows a more sustained improvement.”
