Harvey Norman poised to boom
HARVEY Norman is continuing to witness strong sales throughout its stores both in Australia and overseas as the COVID-19 pandemic funnels consumer spending into home appliances and white goods.
In its annual report released on Wednesday the retailer said the continued impact globally of the health crisis remained unknown. But impact son consumer spending habits had become a major trend.
“To date, the biggest consumer change we have seen in our eight countries is the elevated importance of family, home, work and study from home, cooking and entertainment from home. Our brands are well placed to take advantage of this trend,” Harvey Norman executive chairman Gerry Harvey and chief executive Katie Page said in their report to shareholders.
Sales had continued to climb in the start of fiscal 2021.
“The sales uptick we saw in the last quarter in Australia accelerated in July and has continued in August and September—notwithstanding the metropolitan Melbourne government-mandated Stage 4lockdown.
“Within our company-operated stores overseas, sales improved quickly as they reopened to the public.
“This improvement continued into the September quarter, notwithstanding the New Zealand government lockdown of metropolitan Auckland from August 11, 2020, to August30,2020.”
Last week Harvey Norman said sales surged 30 per cent for the 11 weeks to mid-September.
According to the annual report, Mr Harvey holds 392.38 million shares in Harvey Norman and Ms Page holds 19.77 ms hares. Combined the husband and wife hold shares worth $1.89bn.
The annual report discloses that Mr Harvey’s total remuneration in 2020 was $858,953, flat with 2019, while Ms Page’s total remuneration increased to $3.32m from $3.03m. For 2020 Mr Harvey did not receive any short-term performance cash incentives, while Ms Page had a shortterm cash incentive of $998,073.
The report shows certain franchise es had $7.6 min JobKeeper payments while other non-franchised businesses were granted $2.4 min wages support in the June quarter.