Dixons Carphone has unveiled plans to shutter its standalone Carphone Warehouse stores as part of the ongoing overhaul of its mobile division, resulting in 2,900 expected job losses.
The electricals retailer has stressed that the planned closures, which represent 8% of its UK selling space, are not linked to coronavirus but to the turnaround of its mobile phone business.
Dixons Carphone will continue to sell mobile across its 305 large format Currys PC World stores and has said it expected to be able to redeploy 40% of impacted staff, or 1,800 roles, to other divisions of the business.
But as a result of the closure of its 531-strong standalone Carphone Warehouse store estate, Dixons Carphone said it expects to make 2,900 redundancies.
Dixons Carphone mobile division is set to incur a £90m loss this year, and the retail group has said its decision to close its Carphone Warehouse stores is a bid to return it to profitability.
Chief executive Alex Baldock said: “Customers are changing how they buy technology, and Dixons Carphone must change with them. We’re underway with a fundamental transformation to do so. Today’s tough decision is an essential part of that, the next step in making our UK Mobile business a success for customers, colleagues and other shareholders. Clearly, with unsustainable losses of £90m expected this year, Mobile is currently holding back the whole business. There’s never an easy time for an announcement like this, but the turbulent times ahead only underline the importance of acting now.”
Dixons Carphone has said that it has the mobile restructuring will not impact the group’s profit guidance. However, the retailer said that headwinds across the retailer’s travel division as a result of coronavirus mean “the situation may change over the final weeks of the financial year.”
To date Dixons Carphone said its sales had not been “materially impacted by COVID-19” and that sales across the retailer’s core UK estate have been resilient, and in particular buoyed by sales of fridges and freezers, small domestic appliances and laptops as shoppers prepared to spend more time at home as result of the pandemic.
No comments yet