Total sales at the John Lewis Partnership in the six weeks to Saturday 2 January were up 4.1% from the same period last year to £1,811.1m. John Lewis' gross sales were £951.3m, up 6.9% compared with last year and up 5.1% on a like-for-like basis
Sir Charlie Mayfield, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, says: "This has been a strong Christmas trading period for the Partnership despite the non-food market seeing significant shifts in trade patterns and the grocery market continuing to be challenging.
"John Lewis achieved another very strong sales performance with impressive growth across all three categories of Fashion, Home and Technology.
"Click and Collect continued to show the strength of our two brands working together as a proposition for customers, with 35% of John Lewis online orders collected from Waitrose branches. I was particularly pleased to see overall customer numbers increase 5.8% against the same period last year.
"Our performance reflects to a large extent the significant investment we have made in our distribution and IT capability. Despite the fact trade was even more concentrated across a number of very busy shopping days, our operations performed especially well."
John Lewis' sales were up 6.9% to £951.3m, with like-for-like sales up 5.1%. Online sales were up 21.4%, representing 40% of total sales. There was a balanced contribution from all three product areas, with Home up 5.1%. John Lewis also saw a successful start to its Clearance with sales up 23.0% for week ending 2nd January.
Patterns of trade shifted significantly, characterised by three distinct sales peaks – Black Friday, Christmas and Clearance – with higher sales and a different channel mix for each peak.
The combination of John Lewis shops, website and fulfilment centres worked together effectively. For example, on the Black Friday weekend distribution teams processed 18% more parcels than last year, which equated to five units per second during the peak hour. Sales in John Lewis shops for the total six week period were down 1.2%, reflecting lower footfall pre-Christmas, but were up 16.2% during the first week of Clearance – the week ending 2nd January.
Online sales grew by 21.4% compared to last year and mobile continued to be John Lewis' fastest-growing channel, with sales from smartphones and tablets up 31%. Sales through Click & Collect were up 16% and it was the delivery method of choice for half of all online orders.
Charlie continues: "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 exceptionals to be between £270m and £320m. 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 remains unchanged."
John Lewis Partnership plc will report its full year results ended 30 January 2016 on 10 March 2016.
