Following a horrible 2018, one that saw the stock tumble from £2.02 to £1.21 by the end of the year, the retailer hasn’t been able to rebound in the way it would have liked. It did, admittedly, manage to stagger to a 4-month high of £1.52 in mid-April, overcoming a February/early March slump to do so.
(Source: Spreadex, 14/06/2019)
But since then it has been in troubled, plunging to a fresh all-time low of £1.12 at the start of June. Dixons Carphone PLC(LON:DC) now sits at a current trading price of £1.22.
The company’s last full financial update was actually all the way back in January, as it posted its Christmas figures.
For the 10 weeks to 5th January, reported group revenue was flat, with a 2% increase in UK & Ireland electricals – which saw ‘record Peak sales’, with a ‘stand-out’ performance in Gaming, which saw a 60% surge in sales – and a 4% rise in its International division, countered by a drastic 12% drop in UK & Ireland mobile.
Its like-for-like performance was a tad better, climbing 1% for the group, mainly because the UK & Ireland mobile decline was less severe, the division suffering a 7% slide.
The mobile arm was especially hurt by falling demand for 24-month contracts, with consumers shifting away from regularly upgrading their handsets as the tech-leaps lessen between each generation, instead favouring SIM-only contracts.
During that Xmas update, Dixons Carphone said it was still expecting full year pre-tax profit of around £300 million (a figure unaffected by March’s £29.1 million fine from the FCA). That’d be a 21.5% decline year-on-year, and leave it £200 million short of the £500 million posted just 2 years ago. Considering how sharp the firm’s recent falls in pre-tax profit have been, the most important number on Thursday could well be its forecasts for 2019/20.
Dixons Carphone PLC (LON:DC) has a consensus rating of ‘Buy’ alongside an average target price of £1.91.
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