Back W H Smith Danish WHSmith German دبلیواچاسمیت Persian W H Smith Finnish WH Smith French डब्ल्यू॰ऐच॰ स्मिथ Hindi WHSmith Hungarian WHSmith Italian W・H・スミス Japanese WH Smith NB
 | |
 WHSmith's headquarters in Swindon, England | |
| Formerly | |
|---|---|
| Company type | Public |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1792 in London, England |
| Headquarters | Swindon, England |
Number of locations | 525 (High Street) 580 (UK Travel) 600 (International Travel)[a][2] |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Annette Court (chair)[3] Carl Cowling (CEO) |
| Brands |
|
| Revenue |  £1,793 million (2023)[2] |
| £182 million (2023)[2] | |
| £88 million (2023)[2] | |
Number of employees | 14,177 (2023)[2] |
| Website | Consumer Corporate |
| Footnotes / references [5][6] | |
WH Smith PLC, trading as WHSmith (also written WH Smith, and known colloquially as Smith's and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son), is a British retailer, with headquarters in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery.
The company was formed by Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna in 1792 as a news vendor in London. It remained under the ownership of the Smith family for many years and saw large-scale expansion during the 1970s as the company began to diversify into other markets. Following a rejected private equity takeover in 2004, the company began to focus on its core retail business. It was responsible for the creation of the ISBN book identifier.[7]
WHSmith is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
- ^ a b "WH Smith plc overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK". Companies House. 10 August 2004. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
- ^ a b c d e "Annual Report 2023" (PDF). W. H. Smith. Retrieved 13 January 2024.
- ^ Devlin, Ed. "City Snapshot: WH Smith appoints new chairman to succeed Henry Staunton". The Grocer.
- ^ "Brands And Partnered Brand". W. H. Smith. Retrieved 11 May 2024.
- ^ "WH Smith PLC overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK". Companies House. 10 August 2004. Retrieved 3 September 2023.
- ^ "Terms of Use". WH Smith PLC. Retrieved 3 September 2023.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Book identifierwas invoked but never defined (see the help page).
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).