Partner Article

Revenues reach £2.7 billion at Mike Ashley's Sports Direct

Sales and revenue have increased for high street sports retailer Sports Direct, the company’s preliminary results for the year have shown.

Revenue across the store’s Sports Retail division jumped 24.1% to £2.2 billion in the year to the end of April and group underlying EBITDA increased 15%.

Reported profits before tax were up 15.6% to £239.5 million across its some 600 stores in Europe, including recent acquisitions in Austria and Baltic countries.

Following recent shareholder approval for an extensive employee share benefit scheme, the Board said it would not pay a dividend in order to preserve finance for potential acquisitions.

A statement in the results read: “The Board feels that it remains in the best interests of the Group to preserve financial flexibility, facilitating the pursuit of potential acquisition and other growth opportunities. The payment of dividends remains under review in future years.”

Dave Forsey, Sports Direct chief executive, said: “We have delivered another record year of out-performance especially within our Sports Retail division. This success is underpinned by our core strategy, offering our customers a wide range of products which represent exceptional quality and unbeatable value.

“Through both individual hard work and operating as a team, against a particularly tough comparative which included the UEFA European Championships and the 2012 London Olympics, we have significantly out-performed the third underlying EBITDA target of £260 million set under the 2011 Employee Bonus Share Scheme.

“This means that the Group has now successfully met the first three targets and the Board is very confident of achieving the final target of £300 million under the 2011 Employee Bonus Share Scheme.

“Overall trading since the year end has been in line with management’s expectations with some stronger weeks offset by England’s disappointing World Cup matches. Consistent with previous guidance, we continue to target underlying EBITDA (before share scheme costs) of £360 million for the current period.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .