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Business News HMV Timeline Retail
Sales slip further at HMV
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 24 September 2012
HMV issued another gloomy statement on Friday, admitting that like-for-like sales for the 20 weeks up to 15 Sep were down 11.6% year-on-year. In the unscheduled statement, put out a week before the flagging retailer’s AGM, new CEO Trevor Moore said: “These numbers reflect the challenging markets in which we operate”.
Of course HMV can blame some of the slump on a relatively quiet summer for album and DVD releases, and Olympic telly viewing in August impacted on retail across the board, though the double figures slide will worry investors, who were told by outgoing CEO Simon Fox earlier this summer that the company was set to go back into profit in this financial year.
But adopting a more optimistic tone, Moore added: “The like-for-like decline was less marked towards the end of the period and we should be helped in the remainder of the year by a strong pipeline of new releases in the music, DVD and games markets ahead of Christmas”.
Having sold off its Hammersmith Apollo venue in a £32 million deal, HMV is still expected to sell the rest of its live division, aka the MAMA Group, in due course.
