David Jones' South African parent company says the department store chain lifted adjusted first-half sales 4 per cent.
With Woolworths Holdings' first-half figures encompassing the 26 weeks to December 25, it said overall sales growth took a 2.7 per cent hit because Boxing Day fell in the second half of its current financial year.
Overall sales growth took a 2.7 per cent hit because Boxing Day fell in the second half of David Jones' current financial year.Credit: Paul Rovere
Sales were also dented by 1.6 per cent by the absence of Dick Smith concessions following last year's collapse of the electronics retailer, but sales were up once those two one-off factors were stripped out.
"Whilst the adjustments make analysis difficult, sales appeared to accelerate sharply in the last seven weeks," Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Simotas and Daniel Wan wrote in a note.
Having removed a 1.8 per cent sales bump from the acquisition of the Politix fashion brand, and the Boxing Day effect, adjusted sales at Country Road dropped 0.9 per cent over the same period.
Deutsche Bank noted that this represented an improvement on the sales numbers for the first 19 weeks to November 6, when Country Road's like-for-like sales declined 4.9 per cent and total sales declined 2.8 per cent.
AAP