John Lewis has announced that its like-for-like sales chain rose in the six weeks to January 2nd by 5.1%. Its total sales were also up by 6.9% to £951.3 million.
Shops sales fell by 1.2% reflecting poor footfall pre-Christmas, however improved by 16.2% for the first week of the clearance sale, during the week ending January 2nd.
The department store’s online sales increased by 21.4%, representing 40% of its total sales. Mobile continued to be the fastest-growing channel with sales from smartphones and tablets growing by 31%. Sales through click & collect were up 16% as it became the delivery method of choice for half of all online orders.
Home sales are up by 5.1% while fashion sales climbed by 6.1% and sales in the electricals and home technology category rose by 9.6%.
However, patterns of trade shifted significantly characterised by the three distinct sales peaks of Black Friday, Christmas and clearance, with higher sales and a different channel mix for each peak.
Sir Charlie Mayfield, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, said: "Our strong Christmas trading performance gives us further confidence in the guidance provided at our interim results in September, where we indicated that we expected the full year profit before Partnership bonus, tax and expected to be between £270 million and £320 million.
"This guidance reflected both good operational progress but also an increase of approximately £60 million in pension charges as a result of market driven volatility. Our guidance therefore unchanged."
