Carphone Warehouse remains convinced there is “substantial opportunity” for big-box Best Buy stores in the UK and has reported a like-for-like sales rise at its core mobile business over Christmas.

Following Best Buy’s first Christmas trading in the UK, Carphone Warehouse chief executive Roger Taylor said: “The performance of our first six big-box stores in their launch year has reaffirmed our belief in the substantial opportunity that exists within the consumer electronics market for our innovative, deep service-based proposition.”

He said that the store roll-out programme will continue and Best Buy’s launch of a transactional website before Christmas has delivered a “strong performance to date”.

Like-for-likes sales across Best Buy Europe, which also includes Carphone Warehouse and a share of profits from Best Buy Mobile US, rose 0.7%in the 13 weeks to January 1 and total sales increased 3.7% to £1.03bn.

UK like-for-likes at Carphone Warehouse’s core mobile business in the UK advanced 2.3% over the period.

Taylor said:”Carphone Warehouse Europe has continued to perform well in a Christmas quarter where sales are traditionally much more weighted towards prepay handsets, the segment where smartphone penetration is still low, and where there have been high levels of price deflation in basic handsets.

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