JD Sports profits set to top £1bn

JD Sports has announced that its profits for 2023-24 are expected to top £1bn after posting a profit before tax and adjusted items of £991m for the year ended 28 January 2023.

The company believes that its profits for the next full year will fall in line with expectations which estimate the company will post profits of £1.03bn.

Alongside this, the company posted an EBITDA before adjusted items of £1.70bn up from £1.61bn in 2022.

The profit performance comes as the company posted revenues of £10.1bn compared with revenues of £8.6bn in 2022 – which was boosted by the international development of the company. JD Sports now has 138 stores trading as JD in North America.

Moreover there will be 58 net new JD stores opened across Europe including first stores in Hungary, Lithuania and Greece

There were also seven stores in Indonesia and six stores in Israel opened under joint venture arrangements.

Chair Andrew Higginson said: “In July 2022 I had the great privilege of being appointed the Chair of the JD Group. This followed the departure of Peter Cowgill who had led the business so successfully for the previous 18 years.

“I found a business that had a strong leadership team, committed staff and a supportive majority shareholder in Pentland. The business was in tune with its customers, respected by its branded suppliers, was trading strongly and had a significant number of opportunities for growth ahead of it.”

He added: “Whilst we are encouraged by the resilient nature of the consumer demand in the current period to date, we remain conscious of the headwinds that prevail at this time including the general global macro-economic and geopolitical situation.

“Against this backdrop, assuming current exchange rates, we expect that the group’s headline profit before tax and adjusted items* for the 53 week period ending 3 February 2024 will be in line with the current average consensus expectations of £1.03bn.”