DSGi looks to score with World Cup TV sales

DSGi, which owns Currys and PC World, said preliminary profits will come in as expected at between £80m and £90m. It hopes the World Cup will help sales as shoppers buy new TVs for the tournament.

DSGi’s performance was powered by its Scandinavian business, which generated a 16% like-for-like uplift in the quarter. In the UK, electricals like-for-likes rose 6% but a troubled business-to-business market hit the computing division, which suffered a 5% decline.

DSGi chief executive John Browett, who is leading the retailer’s renewal and transformation programme, said the benefits of “improving the shopping trip for customers” with reformatted stores, two-in-one Currys and PC World shops and better standards of service showed in the performance. Browett said the World Cup would be too early for a big uptake of 3D TVs but he believed shoppers would upgrade TVs because of technological improvements.

“A World Cup would typically give us a Christmas-style peak in TV sales,” he said.

He was relaxed about the UK debut of US giant Best Buy. “There is nothing we have seen that will change our strategy,” he maintained. He pointed out that the Currys megastore in Thurrock, close to Best Buy’s shop, delivers the highest sales and gross profit of any of DSGi’s UK stores.