Home Retail Group
Year’s revenues at Argos £4.1bn
Home Retail professes itself happy enough at the performance of Argos and Homebase since the start of the year. Both went into like-for-like sales decline, but both, the company says, were up against tough comparators in the same period last year.
The market seems unconvinced. The shares lost 21½p to 174p, with analysts questioning why sales at Argos, in particular, should have gone into reverse as the chain introduced “improved customer experiences” that should have had the reverse effect. Meanwhile, the reduction in margins at Homebase was significantly worse than had been feared.
Argos saw some weakness in sales of electronics products, as against the start of 2014, when various new games consoles came on to the