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SHOPPERS’ LOVE FOR Penneys appears to know no bounds as sales at the budget fashion chain took another jump.
The retailer continues to be the jewel in the crown of its UK parent, Associated British Foods (ABF), with trading strong in most of its stores driving a 15% sales increase since last year.
The sales growth for Penneys – or Primark as it trades outside Ireland – has offset the downward slide in other parts of ABF’s business, including its sugar and biofuel trade.
Davy analyst Jack Gorman said Primark’s performance continued to be the “dominant driver” for the company and that growth was on track to accelerate next year with a scheduled US launch.
Trading has also been strong in the new stores the company has opened over the last 12 months across Europe.
It said several of these stores now regularly feature in its top-20 stores by yearly sales. The list included outlets at Berlin-Alexanderplatz, Cardiff, Stuttgart, Cologne and, following Primark’s entry into France, Marseille and all three stores in Paris.
There are big plans to open Primark stores on the east coast of the US in the autumn.
The retail performance effectively saved the period for the company. But its sugar sales were not so hot, driving down revenue from ABF’s wider food businesses.
Sugar
ABF chief executive George Weston said sugar profits were down because of “much weaker” EU prices, but overall it was “sound trading result” for the 24-week period.
Primark’s performance was driven by significant expansion of selling space and superior trading by the stores opened in the last 12 months and plans for its entry into the north-east of the US are well advanced.”
Overall the group posted a 1% rise in group revenue to £6.2 billion while adjusted profit before tax fell 4% to £450 million.
Additional reporting Business Insider
Like a big judo team! Oh well loads of golds to come let’s go
Seeing those chefs is making me hungry!
@Jack Hayes: lol, that’s exactly what I was thinking, thought they were providing the catering to the irish squad.
It’s awful, looks like a mix of a karate uniform and something out of the Salvation Army
I was hoping someone would share my thoughts.
I have not been disappointed.
Terrible.
Its nice to see cookery added as a sport. Kitchens can be dangerous places.
Why does the theme from Love Boat pop into my head?
They look like extras in a psychiatric hospital drama and I’d bet they were made in some sweat shop in the Bronks. They’re almost as hideous as Sinead’s wax head.
A great honour.well done and best of luck to all our team at the Olympics
A hood over the head and they would pass for the Klu klux Klan.
tiresome should have gone with something more traditional, nothing Irish about it. A nice tracksuit or a shirt/chinos combination would have been much better. Opportunity missed.
@Raymond Dennehy: Yes. Sino-Spanish textile and design is … “Traditional” and “Irish”.
I think I missed the part where Ireland had the opportunity, freedom and wealth-luxury to develop their own indigenous fashion over the past Millennium of British Occupation and coerced cultural and linguistic assimilation
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However. Yes. The “4 leaf clover” and “shamrock” is not only an Americanism, but is very much worn-out Americanism at this stage.
Probably we could have done something like non-tartan or Celtic-design embroidered arisaid plaides (worn entirely differently to that of Scots) with Tara brooches with Olympic, County and/or individual symbolism.
…I see nothing wrong with the whites though. White is the anti-Sectarian “Peacemaking” segment of our National Flag. Thus it is a loud statement for Ceasefire and Peace in Palestine and Ukraine.
@Raymond Dennehy: Shirt and chinos as a missed opportunity haha. On you go down to Galvin for men, get yourself a rigout and leave the fashion to the fashionable!
@Raymond Dennehy: Australia, has gear,,next time get the Australia’s to make one
Top Chef?
Reminds me of a Simpsons episode where Homer was on charge of waste control..
Mad how a pro golfer walking with flag of an amateur comp. Mad really
@Robert Doogan: Lad, professional athletes have been allowed to compete at the Olympics since the 80s, although it’s up to each sports federation to make a final call on that. Do you think Rhasidat Adeleke is an amateur ? Her estimated net worth in 2024 is between 2-5 million dollars. And best of luck to her.. Do you want to go through the entire Irish team in terms of who’s proffesional or not .. or is it just Shane you want to have a pop at ?
@Brian: It probably would have been safer for Adeleke if nobody had ever thrown out a very AmeruKKKan “net worth” figure that absolute imbecilic Irish (read: Eastern European+German+Italian Fascists living in Ireland) Racists will interpret as Liquidity. As actual cash rich. As: “next time we see her round Tallaght, let’s beat the crap out of her and rob her Credit cards”.
@Pink Freud: LOL.. and that’s got what to do with my post exactly? .. I mentioned another Irish athlete to highlight a point about professionalism in the Olympics/Irish team.. You’re the one who’s trying to bring race into this.. I see an Irish woman.. What ever you see or want to project is your problem pal.
@Robert Doogan: Time to come into the real world. Where have you been living
@Brian: @Brian: Chill out, Brian. I think athletes should not get paid. It’s not the same as going to actual work is it? Its just like P.E class back at school, although, on a much bigger scale. It’s hardly like going to a double maths or science class. Nightmare!!
Just seen them on the six o’clock news and they look even worse and more ridiculous on television.
It is the worst I have ever seen. All I can say if that is considered fashion forward I will stay in fashion past or present. Just terrible
Let’s hope Ireland matches their uniform with Medals
Absolutely dreadful, no doubt some well connected individual collected a shedful of loot for these monstrosities!
I see nothing wrong with any component targeted in the comments. I think it’s great that she considered so much around symbolism and ethnic identity. But the Americanisms of “4 leaf clover”/”shamrock” is well worn out many years ago. Perhaps she is too long in USA, or is associating with too many plastic paddies, and is far too influenced by yankee mis-perceptions of “Irishness” and has begun losing touch with core Irish symbolism and long lost historic cultural fashions interrupted by Colonial Occupation?
Frankly. One cannot just walk up to a County Heraldrly and simply re-write it.
Doing so, erases it.
It is tantamount to a “cleansing” of the indigenous identity.
Like re-writing the tricolour by exchanging Orange for Purple, Brown for Green, and Black for White. Then lobbing a Marsupial into the centre of it for no apparent reason.
However. These are details that should be seen up close – and nobody has published them **yet** (wtaf lads!?) – and, yennow, they’re a bit of fun, a bit of leeway and “artistic licence”.
Probably, the only component I really have a beef with is the fact that the patches are….patch-y.
I *do* appreciate the artistic representation of “grasslands of Ireland” through “fringing”.
But…
They seem like an after-thought.
Like a grubby fixer-upper of a multitude of mistakes in stitching or template cutting.
They look like they weigh. Like they are rigid and heavy on the arm and irritatingly in the way of free unencumbered upper limb movement.
Or, they also sort of look like a toddler came along and smacked a dose of giant stickers on everyone and everyone is just going along with it ‘for the toddler’.
Perhaps if the patches had introduced the Green?
A bit more green.
Just enough to be distinctly Irish – from a distance…..on a boat….on the Seine
But let’s ask the Athletes what they think of it.
Because what we think, doesn’t really matter.
The Athletes are the ones wearing them.
Norway
Thought the Olympics was a sport competition, not a fascist contest.
@Ciaran O Donoghue: fashion??
I thought I was watching masterchef
Gosh, golly, gee whillikins and wow.
VERY slow news day!
“Medication time”
Give them a tea towel to put on their heads, and they would pass for the management of an Arabian airline.
They’re approaching Liverpool 1995 FA Cup FInal suit level with those things.
SHAME what a shame, no way Lowry represents the Olympic spirit, he cowarder out of Rio because mosquetoes ! He’s like his english plantation ancestors, an opportunists !
The Mongolian one… What’s the big Deel?
have your say