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Carphone Warehouse chief executive Charles Dunstone said today things are not as bad as was feared as the company's profits hit expectations in the City.
“We are doing okay,” he said. “Business is surprisingly robust. As we went into Christmas everyone was nervous about what the market would be like going into the first half of the year, but it hasn't been as bad as we thought it might be.”
The view from the High Street gave an initial boost to shares but they later ticked down 2p to 170½p — almost double their 90p low at Christmas.
Carphone today brought forward the date it will split its retail business from its telecoms business to July next year “at the latest”. It had previously said the demerger was unlikely to happen before next year.
The company posted a jump in profits from £4 million to £133 million in the year to the end of March but Dunstone admitted that much of this was to do with the sale of half the retail business to US giant Best Buy. Revenues fell from £1.42 billion to £1.39 billion.
Carphone is Europe's biggest mobile phone retailer and will also become the UK's biggest residential broadband provider after the takeover of Tiscali for £236 million. The deal will give it 4.25 million residential customers compared with around four million at BT and Virgin Media.
Dunstone added: “We said earlier this year that, while we did not see an early end to the economic pressures, we did not see further deterioration.”
