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WH Smith has maintained its full-year guidance thanks to strong growth in its travel division as sales at the group’s high street stores continued to be sluggish.
Group revenue was up 7% in the year ended 14 November, driven by a 10% increase in the travel business, according to a pre-close, full-year trading update released this morning.
The UK travel arm registered like-for-like growth of 10%, offsetting flat growth in North America, while the rest of the world was up 9%.
WH Smith said its strategy in the UK to create a one-stop-shop for travel essentials was delivering strong results.
Ahead of its peak summer trading season, the retailer launched a new food-to-go offer branded Smith’s Family Kitchen, which, the group added, was performing ahead of expectations.
On the high street, like-for-like sales fell 2% for the year, with declines growing from 1% in the third quarter to 3% in Q4.
WH Smith said the business had performed in line with expectations.
During the second half, the division opened 30 Toys ‘R’ Us shop-in-shops, with another 37 expected ahead of Christmas.
CEO Carl Cowling said: “We have ended the financial year in a strong position, delivering a performance in line with our expectations with good growth across our travel businesses.
“Our UK division performed particularly well over the peak summer trading period.”
WH Smith also announced the launch of a £50m share buyback, which Cowling added reflected the group’s strong ongoing cashflow, £85m returned from the pension fund buyout and the strength of the balance sheet.
“Our colleagues have worked extremely hard to deliver these results over what has been a very busy summer, and I would like to thank them for their contribution to the group’s success,” Cowling said.
Morning update
The FTSE 100 is up 0.2% this morning to 8,218.16pts.
Shares in WH Smith have soared 11.7% to 1,370.2p as markets reacted to the share buyback news.
Other risers first things include Deliveroo, up 7.4% to 164.8p, and Bakkavor, up 3.2% to 162p.
There are few fallers of note so far, with M&S down 0.8% to 353.9p and Premier Foods down 0.7% to 178.4p.
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