LEW EMPIRE SETS RECORD FOR ONLINE
SOLOMON Lew has revealed sales for his Premier Investments stable of stores has surged well ahead of pre-Covid levels.
Addressing shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting, the billionaire retailer said Premier Retail’s global sales for the first 17 weeks of the 2023 financial year were up 23.6 per cent on the same period last year.
Premier Retail, whose brands include Smiggle, Peter Alexander, Just Jeans, Portmans and Dotti, achieved sales growth of 24.9 per cent above pre-Covid 2020 trade.
Mr Lew said Premier Retail had achieved record sales during this year’s ‘Black Friday’ trading week including its highest ever global online sales for a trading week.
After the AGM, Mr Lew said it was difficult to forecast how the retail sector or Premier Retail would perform over Christmas as “there is a lot going on globally” and much of it, especially for fashion and apparel stores, would depend on the weather. “We have got it all ahead of us now, Christmas sales, Boxing Day, back to school, so we have got a lot of trading to do.”
The broader economic settings were supportive, however, of continued robust consumer spending into calendar 2023.
“There is full employment and there is an expectation of higher wages, so there will be more money in the pipeline.”
Premier Retail CEO Richard Murray said doing well over Christmas was the priority.
“I think as a team we just need to deliver Christmas because obviously if you don’t deliver that trading period you don’t deliver the year,” Mr Murray said.
“We have got the stock, we have to trade it.”
Shaw and Partners analyst James Bisinella said Premier Investments appeared well placed to materially beat expectations in the first half of 2023 versus consensus.