ONE MORE THING CIARAN HANCOCKBOOK RETAILER Hughes & Hughes appears to have turned a corner with its book shop at London City Airport, its first overseas foray.
Accounts just filed for Hughes & Hughes (UK) Ltd, show that accumulated losses narrowed to £99,196 in the year to the end of February 2007 from £118,681 in the previous year. The London City Airport shop opened about five years ago.
The abridged accounts indicate that the operation made a modest profit last year. A corporation tax payment of £11,357 was listed under creditors for 2007 compared with a figure of £352 million a year earlier.
The UK business, however, still relies on the financial support of Circuit Line Investments, Hughes & Hughes's Irish parent group. "The directors have given assurances that fellow subsidiaries will not seek repayment of the amounts due of £481,303 if this would in any way impair the trading operations of the company," the accounts state.
Founder Derek Hughes recently opened two Hughes & Hughes shops at Heathrow's Terminal 5 at a cost of £1.5 million. At the time, Hughes said he expected the shops to earn about £14 million a year in revenues, which would boost its top line by about one-third. Given the chaos at T5 since its launch last month, Hughes will probably have to wait a lot longer for his Heathrow shops to take off.
