WH Smith to Sell Its High Street Business

WH Smith, one of the leading retailers in the UK for more than 230 years, has said that it was looking for prospective buyers for high street business. It has hired bankers at Greenhill to explore potential strategic options for this profitable and cash generative part of the group, including a possible sale.

Over the past decade, WHSmith has become a focused global travel retailer. The Group’s travel business has over 1,200 stores across 32 countries, and three-quarters of the Group’s revenue and 85% of its trading profit comes from the travel business.

The company’s 500 stores, employing about 5,000 people in the UK has been a familiar source of stationery, books, greetings cards, newspapers and magazines for generations of shoppers.

The company was founded in 1792 by Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna in Little Grosvenor Street, London, operating as a news vendor. As part of its business, it has been operating from airports, train stations and hospitals, which now accounts for more than 75% of sales and 85% of its profit.

However, there was no certainty that any agreement will be reached, the company said added that it would provide updates on the possible sale. The company did not disclose the details of the potential buyers.

Waning Popularity

The entire Group was valued at $1.87 billion at the close of business on the London Stock Exchange on Friday. However, in recent years its popularity has waned and in survey in 2019, it was ranked the lowest with shoppers describing it as cramped and messy.

Revenue from WH Smith’s high street stores dropped by $21.22 million in 2024 compared with the previous year, though profits were unchanged at $39.95 million.

WHSmith is a leading seller of newsstand comics such as 2000AD, BEANO, Quantum and SHIFT, as well as newspapers and magazines in its high street stores, despite in-store layout changes in recent years deprioritising their visibility. If they were all to close, this might adversely impact specialty publishers – and result in the loss of some 5000 jobs, and many post office branches.

Separate to its WHSmith High Street operation, which has already been reduced in recent years, the company operates 580 “Travel UK” stores, plus 320 in the US and a further 320 in other international locations. However, these will not be affected by a sell-off or closures.

Catherine Shuttleworth, a consumer retail analyst at Savvy Marketing, said WH Smith had become a victim of the shift to online consumption of written material as people were reading news online, not in magazines and newspapers. They were downloading books and send birthday cards through online operators, she added.