Boots has strong December as it continues its recovery

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 5, 2023

Thursday was a good day for UK festive season trading updates with Next and B&M both reporting strong figures in the morning and beauty retail giant Boots joining them later in the day.

The American-owned retailer talked of a “very strong Christmas”, which was something of an understatement given that sales rose as much as 15% last month.

It was helped by the widely reported buoyancy in physical stores, something it also benefited from for the whole of the quarter leading up to December.

The company has clearly cemented its recovery that began back in 2021 and said that the quarter to November 30 saw like-for-like sales rising a healthy 8.7% year on year. That took in Black Friday when it saw its “biggest ever day” for online sales.

But the stores also excelled during the quarter with a 13% sales rise.

Seb James, managing director of Boots UK & ROI, said: “It has been another positive quarter. Our focus on giving customers our best-ever value to help with cost-of-living pressures, as well as continued investment in our digital capability and in updating our store estate, has resulted in increased retail sales and market share growth for the seventh consecutive quarter.

“Our Black Friday and Christmas performance was particularly pleasing, and I would like to thank the teams for their huge efforts in bringing our customers genuinely fantastic offers.”