U.K. Retail Sales Up

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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U.K. retail sales were up a bit more than might be expected in a nation that has been hit by a new recession. The Office of National Statistics reported:

In July 2012, all retailing seasonally adjusted sales volumes were estimated to have increased by 2.8 per cent compared with July 2011. Over the same period, all retailing seasonally adjusted sales values were estimated to have increased by 3.1 per cent.

Two sectors drove much of the improvement:

Household goods stores sales volumes increased by 2.0 per cent in July 2012 when compared with July 2011. Over the same period the value of sales increased by 1.5 per cent. Average prices are estimated to have decreased by 0.2 per cent in the year to July 2012.

And:

Non-store retailing sales volumes increased by 15.2 per cent in July 2012 when compared with July 2011. Over the same period sales values increased by 13.9 per cent when compared with July 2011. Average prices are estimated to have decreased by 1.2 per cent in the year to July 2012.

It is too early to call these signs of recovery, but another month or two of similar advance would encourage that conclusion.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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