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Newly spawned Dixons Carphone leaps onto LSE as £12bn sales org

Welcome to, er, Dix Warehouse

The shotgun wedding between hard-pressed consumer biz Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse was consummated today as the £12bn turnover borg started trading on the London Stock Exchange.

The merger between Dixons Retail, owner of Currys and PC World, and Carphone Warehouse was first announced back in May.

Dixons Carphone - management appears to have decided against a Dixwarehouse brand - will employ 43,500 staff across Europe, with 3,000 stores in operation. There are immediate plans to turn seven Currys PC World branches into combined stores with a further 23 set to open by Christmas.

In a canned statement, Sebastian James, former Dixons boss and CEO of the merged entity, said it will flog everything electrical from a "toaster to the latest smartphone".

The retail titans are also likely to try to make the most of the latest tech buzzword, The Internet of Things, where billions of web-enabled stuff gets connected and make everyone's life that much, er, easier.

James added:

“Today is a big day: our shares officially start trading on the stock exchange and we are off to a flying start with the opening of our first seven combined shops.

The stock started trading at 7am priced at 351 pence per share and is down to 346.85 pence, giving it a market cap of around £6.6bn.

The firms reported their last set of standalone numbers in June, with Dixons up three per cent to £7.2bn It made a net loss of more than £70m including a series of one-time charges. Sales at Carphone Warehouse were down two per cent to £3.28bn due to "reduced revenues" in the phone dealer side of the business but profit after tax grew from £55m to £102m.

The merged business plans to find £80m in cost savings and what the pair previously termed as "revenue opportunities".

Dixons has already done some bloodletting at its Hemel Hempstead HQ, though it insisted that firing staff from the human canon was not part of the merger with Carphone, just merely part of a normal review. ®

 

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