Department store group John Lewis has reported promising profits for the first half of its financial year.

The group who’s flagship store is located in the city’s premier shopping district Liverpool One, celebrates its 150th anniversary this month and fittingly, has experienced a surge in sales of around 6% in the six months.

Figures demonstrate that John Lewis has achieved gross sales of £1.865bn, up 9.4% and an operating profit, before exceptional charges of £56.3m, which was up by around 62%.

Online sales also increased up 25.6% to £552m, which now represents more than 30% of merchandise sales. Shop sales rose by 3.6%.

Sir Charlie Mayfield, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, said:

“Our sales growth was driven by more customers shopping with Waitrose and John Lewis, with customer numbers up by over 6% and 4% respectively.

“This reflects the growing appeal of our omni-channel offer across both brands, including the success of Click & Collect, which now accounts for more than half of John Lewis orders placed online, and the popularity of the myWaitrose and my John Lewis programmes, which are encouraging customers to shop more frequently with us across all of our channels.

“The strong profit performance in John Lewis reflects robust sales growth across all categories, especially in the higher margin ‘Home’ category, and good cost control across the business.”

“Our first half performance has been hard won. I want to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of all Partners (staff members), our co-owners, in achieving these results through a period of significant change, including implementing new IT systems and adopting new ways of working.”

Looking ahead for the rest of the financial year, he said:

“The outlook in the grocery sector remains challenging and we expect that to continue to be the case for some time.”

Source: Liverpool Echo
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