High Street and cut-price focus pays off for Primark

PRIMARK’S focus on the High Street and on cut-price fashion looks set to make it one of the retail winners in the post-pandemic world as shoppers on the hunt for a bargain flock to its stores.

- Simon English

John Bason, the finance director of parent group Associated British Foods, said people are enjoying the thrill of being in actual shops instead of waiting for deliveries at home.

“Not only are they back, they are back with a bang,” he told the Standard. “We have consigned those bad Covid days to the past. Oxford Street is doing incredibly well.”

Sales at Primark’s 419 stores should rise by 16% to £4.2 billion in the halfyear to March 4, which suggests that consumer spending is holding up rather better than economic pessimists have feared.

The group now expects profits for the year to be flat — previously it had guided for lower earnings.