David Jones Sales Declines 11% in 1Q12

Upmarket department store David Jones (DJS) announced earlier today its 11.2 per cent fall on its total sales revenue for the first quarter of the financial year to $414.3 million from the $466.6 million last year.

The derpartment store's Like-for-Like (LFL) basis sales revenue also decline by 11 per cent for the first quarter. “Our trading performance in 1Q12 was broadly in line with the guidance we provided at the time of our full year results in September," David Jones CEO Paul Zahra said.

David Jones expects its first half profit to decline by 15-20 per cent from last year's $105.7 million. Zahra said that the struggles they have faced in the fourth quarter of the previous financial year continued in the current financial year.

"Despite this being below our original expectations in July it is consistent with our comments to the market in August and September at the time of our 4Q11 Sales and FY11 Results announcements," he added.

The David Jones CEO mentioned that their customer base has been hit the hardest by the "wealth effect"including factors such as volatility in the equity markets, weak housing market, employment uncertainty in white collar professional sectors and uncertainty surrounding Europe's debt crisis.

He also added that the company's business was greatly affected in the first quarter of the financial year by mall refurbishments and redevelopments, price deflation in the electricals and the high mix of discounted stock. The company is planning to introduce a new point-of-scale system mid next year to increase the speed of processing transactions and refunds and introduce gift receipts for customers.