Single-price retailer Poundland has posted a sales increase of 11.8% (on a constant-currency basis) for the 13-week period to 29 March.
Sales, which came in at £1.11 billion, were up 2.4% on a like-for-like basis.
In its trading statement, released this week, Poundland said that it intended to open 60 new stores in the UK and Ireland in the first quarter of this year. It opened 15 new stores in the period in question.
Poundland chief executive Jim McCarthy said that he expected growth to continue this year, however, the weak euro could impact its performance outside the UK.
"We expect to continue to deliver our growth strategy in the new financial year, notwithstanding some headwinds from a weaker euro and a tough comparable in the first half,” he said.
Commenting, Shore Capital Stockbrokers noted, “Like-for-like (LFL) sales growth for FY2015 is reported by Poundland to be 2.4%, a very creditable performance in our view, given this all represents volume growth, and which implies a c0.8% LFL sales decline through Q4 on our calculations against a challenging c4% comparative.
“In addition, the ongoing weakness of the euro versus sterling has made for transaction and translation constraints since the commencement of the new calendar year in the RoI, which adversely impacted Q4 sales by c0.6%. Clearly, consideration needs to be maintained upon the £/€ exchange rate which, at the time of writing, is £1:€1.38, having averaged £1:€1.19 in calendar 2014.”
© 2015 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones.
