UK's John Lewis says on track for profit growth after report of weak trading

LONDON (Reuters) - British retailer the John Lewis Partnership said on Friday it remained on track to deliver "significantly higher" annual profit after a media report that it had told staff it was unlikely to hit an internal target.

The Telegraph cited internal documents from the partnership saying it was now unlikely to achieve hoped-for profits of 131 million pounds ($163 million) for the year to end-January 2025.

The newspaper said the partnership blamed “lower consumer confidence and weaker than expected market confidence” for both its John Lewis department stores and Waitrose supermarket chain missing their sales target in the month to Dec. 21 - a period that does not cover the key Christmas trading days and new year sale period.

In response to the article, a partnership spokesperson said: "As we said in September, we remain on track to deliver full year pre-exceptional profits significantly above the 42 million pounds we reported in 2023/24 and we will update on our performance at our results in March.”

In September, the employee-owned partnership reported a reduction in first-half losses to 5 million pounds.

Former Tesco executive Jason Tarry succeeded Sharon White as chair of the partnership in September.

The partnership's department store division in particular has had a difficult few years as it battled first the COVID pandemic and then a cost of living crisis. It closed stores and cut jobs.

But it said in September, it was beginning to benefit from the turnaround plan launched by White in 2020 that sought to boost the appeal of its brands and invest in technology in addition to cutting costs.

Full-year results are scheduled for March 13.

Official data published on Jan. 17 showed overall UK retail sales unexpectedly fell in December.

($1 = 0.8054 pounds)

(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Mark Potter)