Who could blame Sebastian James, the aristocrat at the top of Dixons Carphone, for feeling a little more smug than usual? Sales have surged by an impressive 13 per cent at the chain’s UK electronics stores during the past 12 months.
That’s against a backdrop of a hugely competitive retail sector caught in the grip of deflation. And it suggests that the company’s Currys and PC World stores have mounted a remarkable fightback against online rivals such as Amazon, AO World and Appliances Direct.
There’s more to these numbers than meets the eye, though. The 13 per cent increase was a year-on-year number purely for the final quarter of Dixons Carphone’s financial year, which ended in May.
For the year in its entirety, UK