Dixons Strores Group International (DSGi), the owner of Currys and PC World, have made an annual loss of £140.4m after closing parts of its business and writing down the value of some of its firms. DSGi saw like-for-like sales slump in the year to 2 May as customers cut back on electrical goods.
The company said that, “difficult economic backdrop across Europe and subsequent impact on consumer spending” was expected to continue. It however offered no indication of when it expected any upturn.
The firm wrote off £190.9m from its UK, Sweden and Finland businesses.
Pre-tax profits, without the exceptional items, fell by 77% to £50.5m.
Shares in DSG have fallen by about a third in the past year. In the UK and Ireland, like-for-like sales fell 11% with Currys and Currys.digital, suffering from a “very tough market”.
It added that white goods had been particularly hit by the slowdown in the housing market, but had stabilised in the latter part of the year.
But there had been strong growth in the sale of laptops and netbooks it added.
The firm is hoping to roll out up to 50 revamped superstores in the UK as part of a turnaround plan and said rapid progress was being made with the refurbishment programme.
The revamp programme has included 30 Currys Superstores, which have seen profits grow by between 23% and 65% compared with the rest of the chain, which DSG said was “strongly ahead of management’s expectations”.