Currys and PC World report drop in sales

Currys and PC World owner DSG International today revealed a 10% drop in quarterly sales after shoppers put off purchases until after Christmas.

The group’s UK and Ireland electricals business suffered a bigger decline in comparable sales in the 12 week period to January 10 – down 12%, while UK computing was off 13%.

The trend for consumers to wait until the January sales to snap up TVs and technology helped lift like-for-like sales in the final two weeks, ahead 2% across the group.

But DSG said it was braced for the negative sales trend to continue in a “challenging” 2009 and was cutting costs to offset the tough trading.

It is trimming an extra £20m (€22.2m) from its cost base – bringing the total in the current year to £95m (€105m).

DSG said it will not retain some of the temporary staff hired over the Christmas period as part of its efforts to save cash.

It also hired less temporary workers over the festive shopping season.