Dixons Carphone

Dixons Carphone plc is a British multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company headquartered in London, formed on 7 August 2014, by the merger of Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse Group. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

Dixons Carphone plc
Public limited company
Traded asLSE: DC.
IndustryConsumer electronics
PredecessorDixons Retail
Carphone Warehouse Group
Founded7 August 2014 (2014-08-07)
HeadquartersActon, London, United Kingdom
Number of locations
2,139 stores (2017)[1]
Area served
United Kingdom, Ireland, Mainland Europe
Key people
Ian Livingston
(Chairman)
Alex Baldock
(Group Chief Executive)
Revenue £10,433 million (2019)[2]
£322 million (2019)[2]
£(320) million (2019)[2]
Number of employees
42,000 (2019)[1]
Websitedixonscarphone.com

The company operates under a number of brands in the United Kingdom, Ireland and mainland Europe. These include Currys, PC World, Team Knowhow and Carphone Warehouse in the United Kingdom; Dixons Travel in airports in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Oslo; Currys PC World and Carphone Warehouse in the Republic of Ireland; Elkjøp in Norway; Elgiganten/Gigantti in the other Nordic countries; and Kotsovolos in Greece.

History

Following shareholder agreement in July 2014, the £3.8 billion merged entity was launched on 7 August 2014; on the first day of trading the shares in the merged business were owned 50:50 by the former Dixons Retail and former Carphone Warehouse shareholders.[3][4] Carphone Warehouse's Sir Charles Dunstone was appointed chairman, and Sebastian James became Chief Executive.[5]

On the first day of trading, the company opened Carphone Warehouse concessions in seven PC World or Currys stores.[6] In December 2016, Dixons and SSE, a domestic energy supplier, announced a partnership to provide "connected home" services in the United Kingdom.[7]

In January 2018, Sebastian James resigned as Chief Executive to become President and Managing Director of Boots UK.[8] Alex Baldock left his previous role as Chief Executive of Shop Direct (the company responsible for brands such as Very and Littlewoods) to succeed James as Chief Executive of Dixons Carphone.[9]

In March 2019, Dixons Carphone was given a £29.1m fine from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for misselling its service of Geek Squad. The FCA found that the company's staff were trained to sell the service to customers who already had an insurance cover.[10] During the period under investigation, between 1 December 2008 and 30 June 2015, Carphone Warehouse sold Geek Squad policies worth more than £444.7m.[11]

Dixons Carphone did not contest the FCA's findings and qualified for a 30% discount, reducing the fine from £41.6m.[12] In June 2019, shares in Dixons Carphone fell almost 20% following a significant decline in full year profits, mainly caused by consumers' growing delay in upgrading their mobile phones.[13]

On 3 April 2020, the company permanently closed 531 standalone Carphone Warehouse stores that were solely focused on telephone devices. Subsequently, 3,000 job positions related to the affected stores were cut. According to the firm, the reason behind the closure of the stores was the online shift of customers and a lesser extent of phone upgrades. Carphone Warehouse shops continue providing telephone services.[14] Following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, on 4 August 2020, Dixons Carphone announced additional 800 job cuts in order to reduce the costs caused by the pandemic. The company also announced its plans to re-organise its operations in their bigger stores. Regarding the decision, the firm's chief operating officer stated that they wanted "to empower store leadership teams, create a flatter management structure and make it easy for customers to shop with us."[15]

Operations

The company owns the following brands:[16]

United Kingdom and Ireland
  • Carphone Warehouse – mobile phone retailer
  • Currys – specialises in home electronics and household appliances
  • PC World – specialises in computing; increasingly combined with Currys in dual branded stores
  • Team Knowhow (rebranded from Knowhow in July 2017) – a provider of after sales product support and cover; provides home delivery, installations and repairs
  • Dixons Travel – a retailer operating in the main airports in the United Kingdom, Dublin Airport in Ireland, and on board P&O's cruise ship Ventura
  • iD Mobile – a 4G mobile network operator (United Kingdom)

Northern Europe
  • Elgiganten – ("Electrical Giant") sells home electronics and household appliances in Denmark and Sweden
  • Elkjøp – ("Electrical Buy") sells home electronics and household appliances in Norway
  • Gigantti – ("Giant") sells home electronics and household appliances in Finland
  • Dixons Travel – operating in Oslo Airport

The KnowHow brand is also present in the Nordic stores.

Southern Europe
  • Kotsovolos – sells home electronics and household appliances in Greece

Data security breaches

The group was fined £400,000 by the Information Commissioner in January 2018, as a result of unauthorised access to the personal data of over three million customers in 2015.[17]

A further security breach, said to affect 1.2 million customers, was reported by the company in June 2018.[18] The number of customers affected was later increased to 10 million.[19]

Tech support

In May 2020, Dixons Carphone has offered free phones, networking and a dedicated phone line enabling services, to help hundreds of elderly citizens, who feel trapped and alone through the pandemic.[20]

gollark: This will be very useful to people.
gollark: Oh, cool, apparently my bot's repo doesn't even contain an example config file or any information about what's in it.
gollark: Hmm. Troubling.
gollark: You CAN just pirate papers mostly.
gollark: I never actually learned how python dependency management works apart from just `pip install --user whatever` so anyone using my stuff will probably have similar issues.

References
  1. "Year In Review". Dixons Carphone. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
  2. "Annual Report and Accounts 2018/19" (PDF). Dixons Carphone. Retrieved 1 March 2020.
  3. "Dixons and Carphone warehouse merge to exploit internet of things". Marketing Week. 15 May 2014. Retrieved 1 September 2014.
  4. "Dixons and Carphone Warehouse shares drop on merger". BBC News. 15 May 2014. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  5. Ruddick, Graham (15 May 2014). "Carphone Warehouse and Dixons agree £3.8bn merger". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 15 May 2014.
  6. "Dixons Carphone unveils new stores". BBC News. 7 August 2014. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
  7. "Dixons Carphone joins with energy supplier SSE for UK 'connected home' venture". Reuters. 14 December 2016. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  8. Slawson, Nicola (20 January 2018). "Dixons Carphone CEO will step down to run chemist chain Boots". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
  9. Boland, Hannah (19 January 2018). "Dixons Carphone hires Shop Direct's Baldock to top role after chief executive quits for Boots". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
  10. Jahshan, Elias (13 March 2019). "Dixons Carphone slugged with £29m fine for mis-selling mobile insurance". Retail Gazette. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  11. "Geek Squad fine over insurance mis-selling". 13 March 2019. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  12. Chapman, Ben (13 March 2019). "Dixons Carphone fined £29m for pushing phone insurance customers didn't need". The Independent. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  13. Kollewe, Julia (20 June 2019). "Dixons Carphone reveals big losses at mobile phone shops". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  14. Provan, Sarah; Eley, Jonathan (17 March 2020). "Dixons Carphone Warehouse closes 530 UK stores with loss of 3,000 jobs". Financial Times. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  15. Eley, Jonathan (4 August 2020). "Dixons Carphone to axe 800 jobs in revamp of operations". Financial Times. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  16. "Brands". Dixons Carphone. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  17. "Carphone Warehouse fined £400,000 after serious failures placed customer and employee data at risk". ICO. Information Commissioner's Office. 10 January 2018. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
  18. "Investigation Into Unauthorised Data Access". Investis. RNS London Stock Exchange. 13 June 2018. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
  19. "Nine million more hit by Dixons data breach". BBC News: Business. 31 July 2018. Retrieved 1 August 2018.
  20. "Dixons Carphone provides free tablets, connectivity and tech support to vulnerable older people". PCR. May 2020. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
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