The Carphone Warehouse Group plc has published figures for the third quarter of its financial year. Together with US-based Best Buy, it manages the Carphone Warehouse and Phone House brands in Europe along with Best Buy UK.
Like-for-like sales growth across the Carphone Warehouse Europe business was up 0.7%, despite a year-on-year decrease in prepay connections that caused an overall drop of 7.1% in connections. The UK business saw like-for-like sales growth of 2.3%.
Roger Taylor, CEO of the Carphone Warehouse, said “We've delivered another good quarter, we're again raising our guidance for our profit share from Best Buy Mobile US and we now expect full year earnings per share to be at the top end of the range we gave in November. CPW Europe has continued to perform well in a Christmas quarter where sales are traditionally much more weighted towards prepay handsets, the segment where smartphone penetration is still low, and where there have been high levels of price deflation in basic handsets. Best Buy Mobile US continues its strong momentum, demonstrating its winning formula. The online launch at Best Buy UK has gone well, adding to the strong customer satisfaction with our 'Big Box' stores, where our planned roll-out continues. Our other joint venture, Virgin Mobile France, is well on track to deliver growth and results in line with guidance.”