Carphone Warehouse has published an interim management statement for the latest financial quarter, which ended on 30th June 2012. It says sales in its European business, although up 5.7% year-on-year to £776 million, were actually down 2% on a like-for-like basis. Total connections in Europe were down 17.8% to just under 2 million.
Roger Taylor, the company’s CEO, said “We reiterate the guidance we provided in June when we presented our final results for 2011-12 and there have been no significant changes since then. At that time we said that CPW Europe [the joint venture with Best Buy] was ideally placed to service the complex postpay market, and this remains the case. Our recent offers and new initiatives have already seen positive results across the business, and we are maintaining excellent customer service scores. As anticipated, the prepay market continues to be weak, but we remain confident in our opportunity to reinvigorate this market by driving smartphone penetration into this segment, particularly in the second half.”
The company says the last quarter’s trading was affected by the continuing weak prepay market, mainly due to a lack of attractively-priced smartphones, although smartphone promotions have helped to drive postpay sales growth in the UK. It’s “more optimistic” about the prospect of lower-priced smartphones on prepay deals later in the year.