Argos paid out dividend of €200m after shutdown of Irish business

The retailer shut down its 34 brick-and-mortar stores here in June 2023. File photo: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

The Irish arm of catalogue retailer, Argos, paid out a dividend of €200m following the company’s withdrawal from the Irish market in 2023.

The retailer shut down its 34 brick-and-mortar stores here in June 2023 and was able to make the €200m dividend payout after internal financial restructuring in November 2023.

The directors said in November 2023 the issued share capital of the company of €226.4m was reduced by the same amount by paying off and cancelling 181.13 million of the existing issued ordinary shares. The €226.4m was credited to the company’s retained earnings and the company was then able to make the €200m dividend payout.

Predominantly due to the shutdown of the Irish business in June 2023, sales reduced at the company by 83% from €120.95m to €20.57m in the 12 months to the end of March 2, 2024.

The company is owned by UK retail giant, J Sainsbury plc and Argos Distributors (Ireland) Ltd was hit with a €43.4m cost in the prior year arising from its decision to shut down its store network here with the loss of 580 jobs. The largest component of the €43.4m shutdown cost was redundancy costs of €23.2m.

Last year, the company returned to profit with a pre-tax profit of €2.6m after sustaining a pre-tax loss of €24.1m in the prior year where the scale of the loss was connected to the shut down of the retail network. The company’s profits in fiscal 2024 were boosted by a €6.47m credit from the restructuring programme that was not utilised as part of the €43.4m shut down cost from the prior year.

Staff costs were educed from €14.33m to €4.3m as staff numbers were reduced from 612 to 161. The directors state that the operating profit includes foreign exchange gains of €5.95m. The company recorded a post-tax profit of €1.1m after incurring a corporation tax charge of €1.52m.

The directors said that as the company ceased to trade and will be eventually wound down, the company is currently addressing outstanding legal and regulatory obligations as part of the winding down process. They also said that the company continues to settle residual liabilities and collect outstanding receivables balances.

At the end of March 2, 2024, after the dividend payout was offset by the post-tax profit, shareholder funds reduced from €215.77m to €17.1m.

Separate accounts filed by the Irish unit’s immediate parent, the UK-based Argos Ltd show that its pre-tax profits increased by 34% to £37.34m in the 12 months to March 2, 2024. The profits were boosted by dividend income of £115.66m.

The company operates a network of 1,129 stores across the UK and the increased profits followed revenues rising by 2% to £4.2bn. Numbers employed increased by 686 from 7,045 to 7,731.