John Lewis Christmas Trading Update

John Lewis has revealed a Christmas trading update for the six weeks to Saturday 2nd January 2016:

Their total sales rose 4.1% from the same period last year to £1,811.1m
Waitrose’s gross sales, exclusive of fuel, were £859.8m; a 1.2% increase in comparison to last year, whilst like-for-like sales declined 1.4% on a like-for-like overall during the six week period
John Lewis’ gross sales were £951.3m, up 6.9% in comparison to last year and up 5.1% on a like-for-like basis
John Lewis’ online sales grew by 21.4%, representing 40% of sales
Mobile continues to be the fastest-growing channel
John Lewis’ product areas evenly contributed: Home up 5.1%, Fashion up 6.1% and Technology up 9.6%

Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, also made comments on other aspects of the business:

“This has been a strong Christmas trading period for the Partnership despite the non-food market seeing significant shifts in trade patterns and the grocery market continuing to be challenging. […] Click and Collect continued to show the strength of our two brands working together as a proposition for customers, with 35% of John Lewis online orders collected from Waitrose branches. I was particularly pleased to see overall customer numbers increase 5.8% against the same period last year. Our performance reflects to a large extent the significant investment we have made in our distribution and IT capability. Despite the fact trade was even more concentrated across a number of very busy shopping days, our operations performed especially well.”