Following today’s release of Curry’s figures for the 10 weeks ending 4 January 2025 Oliver Maddison, retail analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view: “Currys showed modest growth over the peak trading period but continued to outperform the electricals sector at large. Its position as the UK’s only large omnichannel electricals specialist played to its advantage, with its results proving substantially stronger than the Very Group’s 2.1% decline in electricals sales over the seven weeks ending 27 December 2024. Group like-for-like (l-f-l) sales grew 2%, primarily driven by a strong performance in mobile, gaming, and premium computing in the UK and Ireland. Although muted, 2% l-f-l growth represents a return to growth from the 3% decline in last year’s peak trading, and the retailer increased its profit guidance for the full year from £140m to £145-155m, boosted by improving margins in the Nordics and strong sales performance of services and bundled sales. The increase in profit guidance has pleased investors with its share price rising 9% this morning.
“Currys reported a 13% increase in order & collect and a 24% increase of ‘online-in-store’ sales, showing the competitive advantage afforded to it by its stores. The retailer boosted this advantage by rolling out a series of store updates ahead of peak trading to improve the customer experience and staff availability, taking advantage of digital shelf pricing, a digital queueing mechanism for staff help, more efficient stock management, and longer opening hours. These changes were made in addition to the 92 store revamps that have been made since July, with a further 23 to be completed by the end of 2025. By investing its instore proposition, Currys will be able to increase the appeal of its omnichannel USP and help maintain its market leading position over pureplay rivals such as second place Amazon, which is rapidly gaining share in the UK electricals market.
“In the UK and Ireland, services and ‘solutions’ sales saw the strongest growth, once again leveraging Currys’ position as the only large omnichannel electricals specialist, while boosting margins. Star performer, iD Mobile increased its subscriber count by 30% to 2.1m year-on-year, whilst credit adoption grew 2.5ppts to 23.0%.”
