Dull sales figures show growth of just 1.4 percent as cautious consumerism bites.Total global sales for all stores including Oz, NZ, Slovenia and Ireland totalled $4.7bn to the nine months ending 31 March 2011, it announced today. This reflects a 1.4 per cent rise.
However, Aussie stores did rise 3.0 per cent y-o-y, despite market conditions.
NZ and Ireland also showed similar slumps, dropping 3.1 and 14. per cent respectively, although perhaps surprisingly its Slovenia store enjoyed a 17.2 per cent sales hike.
Its Australian stores continue to operate in “an extremely difficult environment,” the statement said. Like for like sales actually fell 3.5 percent it also said, when compared to the same period in 2010.
While the TV market remains strong, price deflation, strong Aussie dollar and over cautious consumer sentiment has bitten the sector particular.
Meanwhile on the computer front things don’t look much better either, with the laptop category hit in particular.
However, it’s not all flat and Harvey’s sales was buoyed by positive activity in in game consoles, cameras and smartphones, it said.
And, white goods, home and cooking appliances especially all experienced “significant market share” growth over the period.
And it is confident of “positive contributions from the gaming console, the digital SLR cameras and the smartphone categories, combined with the tablet computer market,” will see it through 2011.
Harvey Norman is “well positioned” to meet retail challenges it faces, it reassured investors.
