The John Lewis Partnership has reinstated its staff bonus for the first time in four years, awarding employees a 2 per cent payout after a modest improvement in sales and underlying profits.
The decision marks a symbolic milestone for the employee-owned retailer, which has spent the past several years navigating pandemic disruption, rising costs and intense competition across the UK retail sector.
The partnership, which operates 36 John Lewis department stores and around 320 Waitrose supermarkets, reported profit before tax and exceptional items of £134 million for the year to the end of January. That represents a modest improvement from £126 million the previous year.
However, statutory results told a different story. The group recorded a statutory loss before tax of £21 million, compared with a £97 million profit a year earlier, largely due to one-off costs including the write-down of legacy technology systems.
Despite the accounting loss, the improvement in underlying performance was enough for management to restore the long-awaited bonus for its 70,000 employee-owners, known internally as partners.
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