PRICES MAY RISE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1937, Page 12

PRICES MAY RISE

F. W. WOOLWORTH

LIMIT

INCREASE IN PROFITS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, January 27. The possibility of. F. W. Woolworth and Co. raising the prices of their articles and goods was mentioned at the annual general meeting by* the chairman, Mr. W. L. Stephenson.

"There is every indication that this present year will carry national prosperity still further," he said in his address. "The prices of materials and manufactured articles are rising, but this in itself is surely evidence of the increased demand which indicates more prosperity. Within reasonable limits, this tendency of increasing prices can be handled by your company. If, on the other hand, and I do not by any means anticipate this, the prices of manufactured goods should become so enhanced as to affect seriously our range of merchandise, we shall and can resort to raising our selling price limit. We should be most reluctant to operate with a higher limit than that existing, but the machinery of the business is sufficiently elastic to provide for any action that might become necessary due to economic conditions."

Last year the company earned a re-' cord profit of £5,832,442, which was more than £500,000 in excess of the previous year's figures. Mr. Stephenson explained that bigger sales were in the main responsible for the additional profit, but that the percentage rise in the volume of business was considerably more than the percentage rise in profit on the merchandise sold. His report would have been a different one if sales had not been good, for there was a moderate reduction in the ratio of profits, due to higher costs of goods, while the expense of operation showed a considerable increase. Because of the very large turnover, a small percentage variation one way or the other in cost produces a result representing a large sum of money.

The growth in the company's business last year was partly due to the fact that forty new stores were opened and fifty-three enlarged. Mr. Stephenson explained that the stocks of merchandise carried by the company had been allowed to increase because of a noticeable tendency towards higher prices.