A snapshot of trading by Brown Thomas and Arnotts since their takeover last year

Accounts just filed in the UK give a first insight into the trading performance of Irish department stores Brown Thomas and Arnotts since the family of Galen Weston sold them in August 2022 (along with Selfridges in the UK and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands) for £4 billion (€4.6 billion).

Accounts filed for Cambridge Retail Group Holding Ltd show that Brown Thomas Arnotts made a loss of £11.4 million on revenue of £153.7 million between mid-August 2022 and January 28th, 2023. A pretax loss of £124 million was recorded for the entire Cambridge group.

Having essentially made an operating profit of £2.9 million, the Irish unit was dragged into the red by a combination of depreciation, amortisation and finance costs. An operating margin of 1.9 per cent compared with just more than 5 per cent at Selfridges and 7.4 per cent at its Dutch sister retailer.

Clearly there is work to do on the Irish margin.

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According to the accounts, Brown Thomas Arnotts had total assets of £566.5 million versus liabilities of £138.4 million. It’s capital expenditure for the period was £9.4 million.

Cambridge Retail is owned by René Benko’s Signa Group in Austria and Tiang Chirathivat’s Central Group in Thailand, which together bought the department store portfolio. The holding company is heavily leveraged with total liabilities, including leases of £3.4 billion and total assets worth £3.8 billion during the period.

A note to the financial statements reveals that a reorganisation of head office functions is under way at Selfridges in the UK, with the outcome to be known this month. A redundancy programme in the Netherlands is in its “very early stages”. There is no mention of a similar programme at the Irish business.

This is just a snapshot of trading at the Irish business of course. We will have to await the publication of the Irish statutory accounts to get a better picture.

There has also been almost nine months of trading since the close of that financial year. The Irish economy is flying, wealthy American tourists are back in large numbers, and the budget this week will put more money in people’s pockets, all of which should keep the tills ringing.