Peacocks has clawed its way back to profit after shedding more than 1,400 jobs, newly-filed documents have revealed. The high street retailer, which was saved from administration in a management buyout in 2020 and is now headquartered in Manchester, shrunk its retail staff from an average of 4,306 employees per month in the year ended February 26, 2022, to 2,836 in the following 12 months. Its financial results for the year ended February 25, 2023 – which have just been filed around eight months after the deadline – also revealed that Peacocks had returned to the black for the first time since the pandemic, making a pre-tax profit of £14.
6m during the year. This was compared to a pre-tax loss of £16.7m in the year ended February 26, 2022, according to a document which has just been published more than 20 months after the deadline.
This return to the black came as Peacocks grew its turnover to £238m in the 12 months ended February 25, 2023, up from just under £160m in the year before. These are the first results Peacocks has published since it was saved from collapse by a management buyout in 2020, which saw a consortium of managers purchase the full company, its employees and all of its stores. In a statement published to Companies House , Peakcocks said: “The challenges in the UK high street have been widely reported and whilst the company has not been immune to the market trends of lower footfall and the continually increasing consumer appetite for online shopping.