Sportswear retailer JD Sports has weathered the worst of the pandemic lockdown after customers switched to online shopping, it has announced.
The Bury firm has issued a trading update in which is says sales for the 22-week period until January 2 were up 5% on last year.
The robust sales came “as consumers readily switched between physical and digital channels”, JD said, leading it to predict full-year revenues of at least £400m, well above market expectations of around £295m.
But it warned that lockdown restrictions were likely to see its UK stores closed until Easter and that it had seen “significant challenges” in dealing with changing regulations.
The company said: “Looking ahead, it is clear that operational restrictions from the Covid-19 pandemic will also be a material factor through at least the first quarter of the year to January 29 2022.
“Whilst we are confident that we have the proposition to continue to attract consumers throughout this period, the process to scale down activity in stores and scale up the digital channels, often at extremely short notice, presents significant challenges.
“We are indebted to all of our colleagues in our different territories who have had to adopt new ways of working.
“Under normal circumstances, we would be confident that the results for the forthcoming year to January 29 2022 would show a strong improvement on the current year.
“However, given the ongoing uncertain outlook with stores in the UK likely to be closed until at least Easter and closures in other countries possible at any time, our current best estimate is that the group headline profit before tax for the full year to 29 January 2022 will be 5% to 10% ahead of the current year.”
JD said it will provide its next trading update when it releases preliminary full-year results in April.
