John Lewis begins to break even

John Lewis, which publishes its annual results on March 14, believes it is on the road to recovery.

Current chair Dame Sharon White announced in a video to staff on January 30 that the Partnership, which also owns Waitrose supermarkets, “would more than break even” in 2024.

Despite three consecutive years in the red, with a £234 million (€273.8 million) loss in 2023, White told employees to prepare for “quite big changes and quite bold changes.”

These will inevitably entail job cuts, following an earlier announcement that John Lewis was considering reducing its staff of 76,000 by 10 per cent to 65,000.

In a move to make redundancies more affordable, it is also slashing payoffs by half.

“There’s been an awful lot of change over the past year,” White admitted in her video. “But those efforts are starting to show themselves in our commercial performance, we are converting more of our sales into return to partners, and we will more than break even this year,” she said,

“This is a great start as we build back to sustainable profit for the business,” she added, having announced in September 2023 that this would not happen before the 2027-28 financial year.