NETWORK Rail has released its latest quarterly figures for retail, marking its highest-ever three-month period.
In the period covering October to December last year, the operator has revealed a total sales uplift of +7% and +7.7% like-for-like (LfL) sales boost across its portfolio of 19 managed stations in Great Britain.
It explains that total retail sales in Q3 reached £240.5m, representing an increase of over £16m compared to the previous year.
Retail sales also overtook the previous quarter, up by over £7m.
Network Rail’s total retail sales for last year surpassed £900m and for the first three quarters of this financial year, reached £701m.
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) tracked a 0.3% increase of LFL sales for the final quarter of last year.
Network Rail has said that sustained quarterly sales growth at Reading station ”underlines the resilience of retail performance” at the station.
Reading station was the fourth best performing station for the quarter, with +10.7% sales during Q3.
Only London Waterloo, London Euston and Liverpool Lime Street outperformed Reading, where sales increased 24.2%, 13.5% and 11.7% respectively for the period.
Sales performances are tracked by Network Rail across retail, F&B and grocery categories, with Q3 seeing the strongest LFL growth in the Grocery category followed by Cards & Stationery.
Guildford ranked fifth with a total sales growth of just under 10%.
This means that London Waterloo was the best performing destination in terms of total sales growth for the third quarter in a row.
In Q3, all five Network Rail regions experienced positive LFL sales performance.
Hamish Kiernan, Commercial Director, Property at Network Rail, said: “Sustained sales growth at Reading station is highly encouraging, as our retail offering across our 19 managed stations continues to go from strength to strength and our Q3 sales figures are the highest ever, demonstrating the appeal of our offer.
“Consistent performance over the last quarter underlines the success of our retail strategy and vision to enhance our destination stations.”
