Numbers impress at Carphone Warehouse

Europe's largest independent mobile phone seller, Carphone Warehouse, managed to avoid an expected slump in sales to post respectable figures for the three months to the end of June.

Like-for-like sales at CPW Europe were down 2% although total sales including new stores rose 5.7% to £776m.

The key UK business is doing well from so-called post-pay growth, which is when consumers sign up to annual contracts. In mainland Europe there has been a weakness in the pre-pay market, driven by a dearth of attractively priced smartphones.

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The group's joint venture, Virgin Mobile France, did well, posting year-on-year revenue growth of 13% to leave quarterly revenues at €122m. The business now has 1,925,000 customers.

In its trading update, CPW sticks to its full year guidance.

The market had been expecting a much worse performance given the Eurozone crisis, consequently Carphone Warehouse shares were up strongly; at 10:53 the stock was 4.23% up on yesterday's close.

BS