Home retail group profits to meet expectations

The Home Retail Group the owners of Homebase and Argos announced today that they will match city profit expectations of £319m for their February year end.

Furthermore the Argos business posted better than expected sales over the Christmas period in an unprecedented boost.

The fall of both Woolworths and MFI is has meant that Argos and Homebase will be in a stronger position to ride out the recession.

In the last two months of the financial year like for like sales were down just 1.6 percent from the previous year and January saw a boost in the sale of traditional toys and video gaming sales which is a result of the departure of Woolworths from UK high streets.

Homebase has had a rougher ride in terms of sales with a 10 percent fall in the last two months although this has been in part due to the bad weather.

On the positive side and in a similar way to Argos, Homebase has seen an increase in kitchen sales having increased their market share due to the closure of MFI.

Despite meeting city profit targets the group did still confirm that 300 jobs will be cut at Head Office and the interior design magazine IDEAS will also be scrapped.

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