Sales at the Irish arm of sports retail giant, Decathlon fell short of directors’ expectations at €46.53m in 2023 in a year marked by the ‘big milestone’ of the opening of the company’s Limerick store.
New accounts for Decathlon Ireland Ltd show that the opening of the Limerick store in May 2023 helped deliver a 20.8% increase in sales from €38.56m to €46.53m last year
The directors state that “2023 was a big milestone in our Irish retail project with the opening of the Limerick store in May”.
However, the directors state that “sales turnover ended up slightly below our expectations but our sales growth reached 20.8% and we met our global result target”.
On June 28 this year, Decathlon opened its third Irish store in the restored Clerys Quarter on O’Connell Street in Dublin.
In their report, the directors stat that “as part of its future developments, Decathlon is also looking for premises or plots to expand its Irish store network”.
The French owned retailer opened its first store at Ballymun in Dublin in June 2020 and was Decathlon’s best ever new country opening in terms of sales and visitors to a new store.
The second outlet atLimerick’s Parkway Retail Park with some 5,000 sq metres of retail space catering for 70 sports.
Since June 2018, Decathlon Sports Ireland Ltd also acts as the supply centre for its European activities.
The accounts show that revenues at the firm last year dipped marginally from €7.478bn to €7.463bn.
The directors state that supply turnover was not at the expected level, with negative growth of 1.2%.
They state that “net margin followed the same trend, slightly under our expectations, however financial costs were not impacting Irish activities at the same level as last year, allowing us to improve our net result”.
They state that “global stock level is in a better situation this year”.
The company’s pre-tax profits last year increased by 148% from €20.49m to €50.78m.
A breakdown of revenues show that €7.07bn were generated in Europe, €344m in ‘rest of world’ and €46.53m in Ireland.
The company paid out no dividend.
Numbers employed at the business last year increased from 188 to 229 and staff costs increased from €6.8m to €8.55m.
Staff was made up of 186 in retail, 36 in finance and seven in service.
Directors’ pay increased from €577,000 to €706,000.
At the end of December last, the firm had shareholder funds of €646.22m that included accumulated profits of €146m.
Reporting by Gordon Deegan