Dunelm has released its year-end trading update, reporting a growth in its market share with a fifth of its sales now taking place online.

Dunelm said that total revenue in the fourth quarter of its financial year rose by 17.7% to £240m and excluding figures from Worldstores by 6.7% to £217.4m. Total like-for-like sales, stripping out the effect of the acquisition and of store openings and closures increased by 3.8%.

“The Worldstores acquisition will provide a massive leap forward to our online and store offer that we think our customers will love,” said chief executive John Browett. “The integration is going well and we are confident in the benefits it will generate. With around 20% of our sales now generated online we believe that we have arrived as a significant ecommerce player in homewares.

“We’ve seen a good quarter of trade with positive like-for-like sales growth and a very strong online performance; encouragingly, we continue to take market share.

“We were expecting approximately 1.5% of LFL sales to move from the third to the fourth quarter as a result of Easter falling later in the year. Sales over the Easter period were however, 7.0% lower than the prior year which equated to a 1.7% adverse impact on LFL growth, thus offsetting the timing benefit.

 “We continue to invest in the business for the longer term to improve our customer proposition and infrastructure and despite an uncertain consumer environment go into the next financial year with some good momentum.”

“Performance continues to improve and is broadly in line with our expectations. We are more confident than ever in the longer-term benefits of the Worldstores acquisition and the value this will bring to the Group.”

Plans for improvements based on the Worldstores acquisition include next-day delivery for a wider range of products and an improved in-house two-man delivery service. Furthermore, a new proprietary technology platform is being developed that “will enable much faster development of products and services for customers.

“Exceptional items relating to the acquisition are expected to be around £17m for the financial year of which around £11m represents a cash outflow. This reflects welcome payments to suppliers, acquisition costs, retention payments, asset impairment and integration and restructuring costs. As we continue to integrate the businesses we expect a further sum of around £7m of exceptional items in the next financial year of which circa £4m will be a cash outflow.

“The Group remains highly cash generative. We have invested significantly in the business during the current year including seven new store openings, implementing our new store format in 11 existing stores, purchasing two freehold properties, investing in Worldstores and developing new product areas such as our improved seasonal offer.”