Major high street retailer WHSmith has confirmed that it will open several new stores across the UK in the next five months. It’s been a rough couple of years for the UK’s main shopping areas, with swathes of closures country-wide.
And while WHSmith has closed some stores, it has also confirmed that it will open 90 new branches worldwide after posting positive results for the year ending August 31. It announced this week that it had made a whopping £1.92bn in revenue, with £166m of that being profit before tax.
And while announcing that, CEO Carl Cowling confirmed that they would be opening 90 new stores globally, including 60 in North America. And when asked by the Daily Star how many of those would be in the UK, a spokesman told us that 10-15 of them would be in the UK – just not necessarily on the high street.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
They said: “We have a new store pipeline of 90 stores yet to open. In the UK we expect to open 10-15 of those this (financial) year all in travel locations. As an example this year in UK Travel we opened 14 new stores including three at airports, six in hospitals and five in rail.”
CEO Carl Cowling praised the company’s travel division when posting the results this week, which explains why the new UK branches will be pivoted to the travel market.
He said: “Our travel divisions are trading well with a particularly strong performance from our UK Travel business, with trading profit up 20% to £122m. We are making excellent progress in the UK as we continue to benefit from the rollout of our one-stop-shop format which is creating significant opportunities to further grow profitability.
“The new financial year has started well. While there is some economic uncertainty, we are confident that 2025 will be another year of good progress for the group.”
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