Irish Dunnhumby unit forks out €7.8m dividend to parent Tesco
THE Irish arm of Tesco’s Dunnhumby data analysis company paid a €7.8m dividend to its parent last year, newly filed accounts for the business show.
It was the first dividend paid by the Irish arm since 2015, when €3.4m was paid to its parent.
Dunnhumby works with Tesco and other retailers and manufacturers, including McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Nestlé, to drill down into customer behaviour and to ultimately boost sales. The firm handles Tesco’s own Clubcard business.
Dunnhumby analyses more than 395 million shopper baskets and nine billion data records every week for clients. Accounts for the Irish unit show that its revenue fell 4pc to €9.7m in the financial year to the end of last February, while its pre-tax profit declined to €1.1m from €1.2m.
The company noted that it provides “customer data analytics and media services, primary to retailers and consumer goods manufacturers in Ireland”.
It added that it uses its tools to better understand retail customers, improve their in-store and online experiences, and earn their loyalty to enable “major grocery and department store retailers to grow like-for-like sales and net margins”.
“The performance of the business continues to reflect the uncertainty in the Irish economy and the consolidation by some CPG [consumer packaged goods] companies of their operations,” the directors of Dunnhumby Ireland noted in the latest set of accounts.
Newly filed accounts for the UK-based Dunnhumby parent firm show that it generated revenue of £372.2m (€444m) in the last financial year and a £29.9m operating profit.
Of the Irish arm’s turnover in the last financial year, €5.5m was derived from “insights and retailer turnover”, while €4.1m came from the sale of media-related services.
In 2015, Tesco pulled the plug on a planned sale of a majority stake in Dunnhumby, which could have valued the business at up to £2bn.
Tesco acquired the business in 2004.
The proposed sale was part of an asset review by Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis, who was parachuted into the retailer in 2014 to revive the business.
He also had to handle the fallout from an accounting scandal.
The firm analyses more than 395m shopper baskets every week