JD Sports Fashion PLC on Thursday reported sales growth perked up in the second quarter, boosted by double-digit organic sales growth in North America and Europe.
The Lancashire, England-based sports fashion retailer said like-for-like sales rose 2.4% in the 13 weeks to August 3, improving from a fall of 0.7% in the first quarter.
On an organic basis in the recent quarter, sales climbed 8.3%, with North America sales up 14%, and Europe and Asia Pacific up 11%. UK organic sales growth lagged at just 1.2%.
For the full first half of the financial year, like-for-like sales rose 0.7% with organic growth of 6.4%.
In response, shares in JD Sports were up 3.4% to 132.50 pence each in London on Thursday. It was the best performing stock in the FTSE 100 which was up 0.2%.
Peel Hunt said the update was ‘somewhere between reassuring to good, with [like-for-like] improving in all areas and material market share gains.’
JD Sports Chief Executive Regis Schultz said growth was supported by the continued success of its JD store rollout programme.
‘Based on our first-half trading, we remain on track to deliver profit within our full-year guidance,’ Schultz added.
This was despite a global macro environment that remains ‘volatile’, leaving the group cautious on the outlook for the rest of the financial year, Schultz said.
Despite an expected around £15 million forex headwind, JD Sports expects full-year pretax profit before adjusting items of £955 million to £1.04 billion, excluding Hibbett. Adjusted pretax profit in financial 2024, which ended on February 3, was £917.2 million.
In April, the company bought US sports fashion retailer Hibbett Inc for an enterprise value of $1.11 billion.
Birmingham, Alabama-based Hibbett operates 1,169 sports fashion stores across 36 US states, mainly under the Hibbett and City Gear brands. In the financial year that ended February 3, Hibbett recorded $131.6 million in pretax profit on $1.73 billion in net sales.
JD Sports said the overall market remains ‘volatile’, but it had managed inventory to support gross margin. Despite this, gross margin in the quarter fell 30 basis points to 48.4%.
This decline was seen mainly in apparel and online, where the UK was the most impacted.
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