Flat screen TVs helped boost Comet's sales over Christmas

Its comments came despite improved sales over Christmas at the Comet electrical goods chain thanks to demand for items such as flat-screen TVs.

Like-for-like sales at Comet fell 2% in the three months to 8 January, but this was better than the 3.1% sales dip seen in the previous quarter.

However, Kesa's French furniture chain BUT reported an 8.6% drop in sales.

Kesa warned that BUT was continuing to face "aggressive" competition.

There was better news, however, from its French electrical goods retailer Darty which delivered better-than-expected like-for-like sales growth of 2.5%.

Overall, like-for-like sales across the Kesa group were down by 0.3%.

"Following a difficult November, all our electrical businesses experienced better sales performances in the key peak trading period," said chief executive Jean-Noel Labroue.

"As predicted, this was driven by strong sales in new technologies while sales of the more traditional white goods continued to be weak."