WH Smith reports fall in sales at high street stores

WH Smith has reported falling sales at its outlets at Christmas, but said profit margins were up thanks to a focus on selling stationery and books. The company's chief executive, Kate Swann, has boosted profits by cutting costs and pulling out of markets including CDs, DVDs and video games, where the markup for retailers is small. Like-for-like sales fell by 6% at WH Smith's high street stores and were down by 3% in the travel division during the 21 weeks to 21 January. Swann described it as a "resilient performance in challenging trading conditions", and shares finished up by more than 4%.