Revenues at JD Sports Fashion for the year ended Jan. 31 increased by 13.3 percent to £670.9 million (€757.6m-$983.1m). The gross profit margin inched up by 0.1 percentage point to 49.3 percent, and the pre-tax profit grew by 9.1 percent to £38.2 million (€43.1m-$56.0m). The operating margin before extraordinary items increased to 8.1 percent from 7.4 percent.
This other major British retail company, which is controlled by Pentland Group, also reported a 24 percent improvement in pre-tax profit before exceptional items to £53.6 million (€63.6m-$82.5m). One of these extraordinary items was the impairment of JD Sports Fashion’s share of 9.98 percent in JJB Sports for £6.1 million (€6.9m-$8.9m). The final net profit came to £24.5 million (€27.5m-$35.7m), up from £23.6 million. Dividends for the year are being raised by 41 percent.
Sales were up by 3.9 percent on a comparable basis. Operating profit jumped by 24 percent to £54.5 million (€61.5m-$79.9m), driven by improvements in stock management thanks to investments in merchandise planning system and staff. Divided into business units, the sports segment, represented by the JD and Size stores, saw an increase of 19.1 percent in its operating profit to £54.3 million (€61.3m-$79.6m), while fashion (Bank, Scotts and Deakins) had a positive operating result of £0.2 million (€225,840-$293,070), turning around from a £1.6 million loss the previous year.
Capital expenditures totaled last year £30.1 million (€34.0m-$44.1m), up from £21 million in 2008. Despite the additional investments, JD finished the year reporting an increased cash position of £23.5 million (€26.5m-$34.4m), more than double the amount from the year before.
Total revenues for the sports segment for the year were up by 5.0 percent to £571.8 million (€645.7m-$837.9m), with comparable sales climbing by 3.3 percent. The gross margin remained the same at 49.8 percent, but the company noted that a negative contribution of 0.6 percentage points came from the end-of-line wholesale business of Topgrade Sportswear, an operation that has been added to sell sports and fashion brands at discounted prices online and through catalogs. This operation has been launched under www.getthelabel.com. Some of the brands available on the site are Adidas, Nike, Lacoste and Timberland.
Over the year, JD opened 16 new JD stores and two new Size stores in its sports division, and refurbished 32 stores. Eighteen stores closed, which includes one that was converted to a shop in the fashion division. At the end of the 52 weeks the company had 345 sports stores, the same number it had going into the year, but on a slightly larger net retail surface of 1,105 million square feet.
For the nine weeks that ended April 4, comparable sales were coming in at 0.3 percent more than last year, with the sports segment falling by 0.2 percent and fashion growing by 3.6 percent.
