As Battle Retailer In Jd Currys Joining Play Takeover Mulls

Retailer Currys in play as JD.com mulls joining takeover battle — Picture: Retail Four In Carphone – 2021, Into Brands Merge One Operated Currys World, To Shifted Ash/pa And The Dixons Its Warehouse Included Which Strategy It – Thomas Central Pc Brand

Mon, 19 Feb, 2024 - 15:59

Eamon Quinn

The future ownership of Currys is now in play as a second potential bidder, Chinese online sales giant JD.com said it is thinking of joining a takeover battle for the appliance and electronics chain that has 820 stores across the world, including 23 in Ireland, north and south.

It comes after Currys over the weekend rejected a reported £700m (€820m) offer from the long-established US hedge fund Elliott Management. Elliott had made bids last year for fashion chain Reiss and cosmetics retailer The Body Shop, which did not go through.

Reflecting the potential for a bidding war should JD.com table an offer, the London-listed shares of Currys jumped 37% yesterday.

Currys has had a number of bad years as it negotiated its exit from Greece.

However, approaches from Elliott, and now potentially from JD.com, may reflect that they believe the company has turned a corner following the dual blows of the pandemic and the current cost-of-living crisis that has affected its customers in Britain in particular. The retailer operates around 820 stores worldwide, including 23 outlets across Ireland, north and south. It has long been a fixture of British and Irish retailing. In 2021, Currys shifted its strategy to merge the four retail brands it operated – which included PC World, Dixons and Carphone Warehouse – into one central brand. It also shut 531 standalone Carphone Warehouse stores in 2020, with the loss of 2,900 jobs.

However, despite Monday’s advance, the shares are still trading over 55% below levels of three years ago, reflecting some of the challenges that the retailer has weathered.

In December, the company posted a pre-tax loss of £16m (€18.6m) for the first six months to late October. It subsequently reported lacklustre sales through the key Christmas period, as customers reined in spending.

The business has struggled in recent years with significant challenges in the 95 stores it owns in Greece and Cyprus where it expects to complete a plan to sell up early this year. The UK and Ireland remains by far its largest region but it doesn’t break out the operations of the two areas.

Currys was founded in 1884 by Henry Curry as a bicycle-building business before diversifying into the sale of toys, gramophones and radios when it listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1927. It is now a member of the Ftse-250 index of mid-sized companies that can give a wider view of the performance of the British economy and retail spending.