Poundland’s quids in: Sales surpass £1bn at discount retailer for the first time
Sales at Poundland have smashed past the £1bn mark for the first time.
The figures
Sales at Poundland for the full year to the end of March were £1.1bn, up almost 12 per cent on the previous year's sales of £997m on a constant currency basis.
It expects pre-tax profits to be in line with expectations of between £42m and £44.6m
Like-for-like sales were up 2.4 per cent for the year.
Why it's interesting
Poundland floated last year and was one of the City's more successful IPOs in 2014. The bargain store's ambitions have continued splashing £55m on its rival 99p Stores, sending shares to an all-time high in February. The retailer does face an investigation by the competition regulator over the deal, however.
What Poundland said
We opened a net 15 new stores in the UK and Ireland during the fourth quarter, taking the total to a net 60 stores during the 2015 financial year, in line with our target. The group ended the financial year with 547 stores in the UK and 41 stores in Ireland (2014: 497 and 31 respectively) and has a strong pipeline of stores for the current financial year.
We have continued to develop our trial in Spain and are pleased with the initial progress. At the end of the quarter we had five stores and have since opened our third store in Madrid. We will give a further update on the trial's progress at the time of the group's preliminary results.
"We expect to continue to deliver our growth strategy in the new financial year, notwithstanding some headwinds from a weaker Euro and a tough comparable in the first half," said chief executive Jim McCarthy.
In short
The chain served 5.3m shoppers a week in the fourth quarter. That's a lot of people hunting down a bargain despite an overall slowdown in consumer sales for retailers.