JD Sports v Frasers Group: Tracksuits, takeovers and billions: the battle to control British retail

Question one

Which is bigger, JD Sports or Frasers Group?

JD Sports, and by a distance on every measure of size in the two filings. JD Sports Fashion PLC reports consolidated turnover of £12,662m against £4,926m at Frasers Group PLC, a multiple of 2.6. Headcount runs 65,027 against 31,022, a multiple of 2.1, and net assets £2,990m against £1,960m.

Both figures are consolidated group lines, so subsidiary trade already sits inside them. Neither number is the sum of anything else on this page, and nothing here adds the two groups together, because no filed set of accounts contains both.

Direction of travel separates them further. JD's turnover moved up 10.5% on the prior year and its headcount up 8.8%. Frasers' turnover moved down 11.1% and its headcount down 4.2%. Estimated profit before tax fell at both, from £715m to £629m at JD, a fall of 12.0%, and from £507m to £379m at Frasers, a fall of 25.2%.

The two also file under different activity codes. JD's principal codes are retail sale of clothing and retail sale of footwear in specialised stores. Frasers Group PLC files under activities of head offices, which is what you would expect from a parent whose trading sits in its subsidiaries and whose own returns describe the group rather than a shop.

Question two

Which keeps more of every pound it takes?

Frasers, on these accounts. Take £100 of turnover through each group and Frasers holds £7.70 of it as estimated profit before tax, while JD holds £5.00. The gap comes from two places. Frasers spends less of each pound on payroll, £13.30 against £15.40, and its residual cost base, everything from stock to rent to depreciation, absorbs £75.30 against JD's £78.30. Financing pulls the other way, taking £3.70 from Frasers and only £1.30 from JD.

Question three

Why does Frasers pay more interest than JD on well under half the turnover?

Because it carries more recorded borrowing. Frasers Group shows estimated borrowings of £1,861m and interest payable of £183m. JD's interest payable is £169m, so Frasers pays £14m more in absolute terms while running turnover that is under two fifths the size. As a share of turnover the gap is wide, £3.70 per £100 at Frasers against £1.30 at JD.

The liquidity picture runs the other way. JD holds £854m in bank and cash against £252m at Frasers, a multiple of 3.4, inside current assets of £3,212m and £2,356m respectively. Frasers is the only one of the two to book interest received, at £29m.

Debtors separate the two businesses more sharply than any other balance sheet line. JD carries £37m of debtors, about 1% of its current assets, which is what a chain that takes payment at the till looks like. Frasers carries £247m, about 10% of current assets, roughly 6.7 times JD's figure on a group less than half the size. That is the shape of a business with wholesale, brand and investment activity sitting alongside the shops.

Distribution policy differs too. JD records dividends of £52m, roughly 8p in every £1 of estimated profit before tax. Frasers records none in the period these accounts cover.

Question four

Who pays more per head, and whose headcount is growing?

JD on both counts. Average staff cost per head is £30,000 at JD against £21,000 at Frasers, a gap of £9,000 or roughly 1.4 times. Total staff costs are £1,954m against £655m, a multiple of 3.0 on a headcount multiple of 2.1, which is the pay gap showing up in the aggregate.

The figure is an average cost to the employer across the whole group, not a wage. It moves with seniority mix, geography and the share of full time roles, so a group with more overseas management and fewer short hours store roles will read higher without anyone being paid differently for the same job.

Headcount is moving in opposite directions. JD is up 8.8% to 65,027, Frasers down 4.2% to 31,022, a spread of 13.0 points. Turnover per employee lands at roughly £195,000 at JD and £159,000 at Frasers, so JD is both adding people and generating more revenue behind each one.

Question five

What do the filings show about property?

A great deal for JD and nothing for Frasers, on these two entities. JD Sports Fashion PLC has 311 registered titles attached to it, 6 freehold and 305 leasehold, running from Oxford Street and the Trafford Centre to shopping parks in Prestatyn, Skegness and Cwmbran. Frasers Group PLC carries no titles on this record, which fits a head office parent whose estate is held elsewhere in the group.

Most of those titles disclose no price. Nine of the 311 do, and they total roughly £30m. Four of the nine sit in one place, the Pilsworth and Hollins Brook Way cluster in Bury that forms JD's home base, at about £15m across Salserve, Warwick House, Balmoral and Windsor House, and Edinburgh House. The largest single disclosed price is the £6m paid in 2015 for floors at 197 to 213 Oxford Street. Two former Toys R Us freeholds, in Swindon and Derby, account for a further £4m and £5m.

A price paid of zero in the register means not disclosed or nominal rather than free, so the £30m is a floor on what the estate cost, not a valuation of it. Component figures are rounded independently and will not always sum to the rounded total.

Control

Who sits on each board, and what is charged?

Both are listed public companies, so neither files persons with significant control data, and this section stays with what the register does hold: officers and charges.

JD Sports Fashion PLC shows 11 current officers out of 42 appointments on record, with Régis Schultz appointed in September 2022. Frasers Group PLC shows 9 current officers out of 34, with Michael Murray appointed in May 2022. The board turnover at both is recent and substantial.

Both registers record the same structural break in the same year. Peter Cowgill's JD appointment ended on 8 June 2022 and Michael Ashley's Frasers appointment ended on 19 October 2022, four months apart, closing the era in which the two groups were led by the men most associated with them.

On charges, JD carries 26 on its register, of which 25 are discharged. Twenty four are Barclays property charges from 1987 to 1993, all released in 1996, a paper trail of the store estate the business was assembling at the time. One charge remains outstanding, registered to Mizrahi Tefahot Bank on 5 August 2024. Frasers Group PLC has 3 charges on its register and all three are discharged, the most recent released in February 2018.

The ledger

Every figure, side by side

Each row is a single filed measure for each group, plus the relationship between the two. No row is a total across both companies.