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Disappointing Christmas sales at Waitrose are to blame for John Lewis missing profits targets over the festive season in a setback for the partnership’s ongoing turnaround.
JLP blamed “lower consumer confidence and weaker than expected market confidence” for missing its sales target in the month to 21 December, alongside key Christmas trading days falling outside this period.
“Both John Lewis and Waitrose missed their sales targets,” according to internal documents seen and reported by The Telegraph.
However, the business still claimed it had outperformed rivals, saying staff should be “proud of our performance”.
Upmarket rival M&S, by contrast, celebrated a market-leading Christmas with food sales up almost 9% in the 13 weeks to 28 December. And the most recent data from Kantar revealed festive sales at Waitrose only increased 2.1%.
It is a setback for the turnaround efforts being led by new chairman Jason Tarry, the former boss of Tesco UK who joined the partnership last year.
A John Lewis spokesman said: “As we said in September, we remain on track to deliver full year pre-exceptional profits significantly above the £42m we reported in 2023-2024 and we will update on our performance at our results in March.”
However, it is understood the partnership is unlikely to hit internal profit targets for the group of £131m.
Morning update
Two fmcg businesses walked away from Dragons’ Den last night having secured investment offers.
Seep founder Laura Harnett secured £50k in return for a 4% stake from Deborah Meaden and guest dragon Trinny Woodall, while Love Sum founder Sandy Tang won a £50k offer from Peter Jones in return for 20% of the dumplings business.
Read the full story about Seep’s appearance here and the other story about Love Sum and former MasterChef finalist Sandy Tang here.
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