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Dixons Carphone Brexit Marketing

Dixons Carphone CEO refuses to rule out price rises post-Brexit and calls on peers to be ‘grown-ups about this and move on’

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By Seb Joseph, News editor

June 29, 2016 | 4 min read

Dixons Carphone boss Sebastian James believes the brand is in a “relatively strong place” to capitalise on the uncertainty caused by the Brexit vote thanks to a strong year of earnings behind it and its experience navigating through testing times.

Dixons CEO refuses to rule out price rises post-Brexit and calls on peers to be ‘grown-ups about this and move on’.

Dixons CEO refuses to rule out price rises post-Brexit and calls on peers to be ‘grown-ups about this and move on’.

The retailer is the market leader in a sector, alongside fashion and holidays, which is expected to experience a slowdown in spend. More than a third of Britons are likely to curb spend on big purchases in the wake of the country’s decision to leave the European Union, according to a recent Retail Economics poll of 2,000 people.

To maintain its own growth during these testing times the Dixon Carphone chief refused to rule out price rises across its ranges, previously warning of such a move if the UK was to leave the European Union. He told the BBC that the business would be working with its suppliers to “make sure that customers always get a great deal”.

He suggested that prices of electrical consumer goods would not rise as much as food or fashion, picking out two reasons: prices are driven more by the technology and that the value of electronical devices depreciates relatively quickly.

“If you don’t like the price of a TV today then if you wait three months we’ll almost certainly have it on promotion,” James said.

His optimistic appraisal of Dixon Carphone’s chances future comes off the back of a nasty Brexit hangover for the FTSE 250 index, which is considered a closer barometers of the UK economy than the FTSE 100. It suffered its worse two-drop since Black Monday in 1987

Such volatility is to be expected given what business and financial experts predicted would happen should the UK vote to leave in the European Union. However, Dixons Carphone’s chief executive is adamant that opportunities to grow will present themselves. He said his business was “pretty road tested” in dealing with “choppy waters”, citing its ability to come through the financial instability caused by Greece’s debt crisis last year as “stronger, bigger and more profitable”.

Profit at the business climbed 17 per cent to £447m in year to April as like-for-like sales rose five per cent across the group. Much of the growth came from the UK, Ireland and Nordic, with the home nations accounting for £6.6bn in sales, six per cent up on the same period last year, while Scandinavia generated £2.6bn.

“We’re in relatively strong place not least because we’ve got a good year of earnings and very strong balance sheet that give us very firm foundations,” explained James.

“This is not perhaps where I would’ve liked to end up but the only way forward is to turn it to our advantage [and] to make sure that no matter what we’re always doing the best job we can for the people who shop with us….our view is we need be grown-ups about this and move on.”

Dixons Carphone Brexit Marketing

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