Shropshire Star

Poundland reveals soaring sales amid expansion of clothing lines

Bargain price stores chain Poundland saw sales growth of 3.1 per cent in the first three months of this year.

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Poundland now has 875 stores across the UK and Ireland

They were up to £356.5 million for the business, which has its head office in Willenhall, and for the half year increased 1.6 per cent to £812m.

Poundland, which opened its first store in Burton upon Trent, in Staffordshire in 1990, has 875 stores in the UK and Ireland and employs 17,000.

Parent group Pepkor Europe's revenue rose 12.5 per cent for the three months to £646.9m and 14.2 for the six months to £1.52 billion.

The European discount retail group also owns the Pepco and Dealz brands in Europe.

It said that Poundland continued to outperform the wider UK high street driven primarily by the competitive differentiation from the introduction of clothing ‘shop-in-shops’, now present in approximately 300 stores, and measured product range extension to support a broader range of price points.

Poundland is continuing to rationalise its store portfolio, balancing the exit from stores in weaker catchments with carefully selected new store opportunities in stronger locations.

In the half year, benefitting from locations released by the failure of a competitor business, Poundland opened 20 new stores in the UK and improved the portfolio further through five re-locations to larger stores.

Pepkor said stores were continuing to deliver strong returns on invested capital.

Andy Bond, chief executive of Pepkor Europe, said: “Pepkor Europe is rapidly developing into a strong, geographically well balanced pan European variety discount retailer.

"The strength of the group’s trading performance in the first half year reflects our market leading positions within a core discount segment accessed by an increasing number of customers. With the benefit of scale leverage in Pepco and targeted efficiency improvements within Poundland, profit growth in the half year will be stronger than the revenue growth reported today.

"Our trading progress has been matched by our strategic development. We continue to confidently expand Pepco and our belief that the Dealz format in mainland Europe can provide an exciting additional source of growth is increasing.

"Our planned investments in scaleable infrastructure across the group to secure the growth opportunity available to us, may slow our rate of earnings growth in the second half year, but with a focused strategy in place and a strong financial base, the opportunity for long-term growth across Europe is clear.”

Within the UK Poundland has now rolled out its fashion brand PEP&CO in approximately 300 of its larger stores.