JD Sports profits and sales climb in ‘record’ half-year

The sports fashion retailer reported a 33% leap in pre-tax profits to £102.7m in the 26 weeks to July 29 driven by a 44% jump in revenue to £1.36bn.

The retailer’s UK and Ireland like-for-like sales rose 3% during the period, while like-for-like sales in mainland Europe increased 7%.

JD Sports opened a net 12 new stores in the UK and Ireland at the half-year mark and a net 23 stores across mainland Europe and its first store in mainland Australia.

After flagging that its margins had come under pressure in a trading update in June, the retailer confirmed in its interim results that it expected its full-year profits to be at the upper end of market expectations, which range between £268m and £290m.

The sports fashion retailer’s UK and Ireland online sales posted double-digit like-for-like growth during the period and accounted for 13.7% of net sales.

Outdoors

The retailer also said that Go Outdoors, which it acquired in May, had made a positive contribution to revenue during the period.

JD Sports’ outdoors category posted an operating profit of £0.1m during the period, up from a £2.3m loss the previous year. Blacks and Millets made a loss of £1.6m, down from £2.3m the previous year.

The retailer also unveiled plans to open its first dual gym and store fascia in July.

Chief executive Peter Cowgill said: “This is another pleasing result demonstrating the strength of our highly differentiated multichannel proposition and our ability to prosper in an increasingly competitive market for athletic-inspired footwear and apparel.

“The base of our ongoing excellent multichannel retail performance comes from the continued strength of our core UK and Ireland Sports Fashion fascias.

“We have strengthened our foundations by significant progression internationally both in-store and online so that the JD fascia now has a much broader store and multichannel consumer reach and brand influence globally.

“We are encouraged by the sales to date in the second half, which have continued at similar levels to those in the first half, supporting our continued confidence in the robustness of the JD proposition.”