WH Smith is closing about 30 stores, most of which are part of its Cardmarket budget chain, as it adapts to challenging conditions on the high street.
Stephen Clarke, the chief executive, said the retailer would be closing six WH Smith stores which had “not got a hope of making any money” and about 24 Cardmarket outlets over the next three years. WH Smith would not confirm how many jobs would be affected, but Clarke said staff would probably be redeployed to other stores as the chain continued to open new outlets in hospitals, airports and other travel hubs.
The chain said it expected to open up to 20 stores in the UK this year, about half of which would be in hospitals, and had 607 high street shops as well as 867 travel outlets around the world.
The group was preparing to bring 40 crown post offices into its stores next year and take on the franchises of 33 further post offices which the state-owned service currently runs in WH Smith stores. As a result it would run more than 200 post offices, which it sees as a way to use spare space and encourage shoppers to visit its stores regularly.
Clarke said the arrangement was attractive to the Post Office because WH Smith stores cost less to rent and run.
Rhys McCarthy, a national officer of the Unite trade union, said the post office move was “accelerating privatisation by stealth”.
WH Smith revealed a 4% fall in pretax profits to £134m in the year to 31 August, despite a 2% rise in total sales to £1.3bn. A 7% rise in trading profit at the group’s airport, hospital and railway station stores helped offset a 3% fall in sales and profits at its high street stores.
Clarke said high street conditions were tough but WH Smith was “doing well”, making its third-highest profit in 15 years after a pick-up in trading in the last six months.
He credited the improvement to a surge in sales of products related to the trend for making slime, which had emerged in the last five months, increasing sales of glue alone by 1,000%. “I think this trend is of a similar scale to adult colouring. It’s still going and hopefully it will carry on until Christmas is out of the way.”
