Primark price cuts covering hundreds of clothing lines arrived this week with impeccable timing: the retailer is haemorrhaging younger shoppers to Shein and Temu, its like-for-like sales have been sliding, and its parent company is preparing to float it as a standalone business. Whether cheaper jeans can fix all three problems at once is a more complicated question than the announcement suggests.
A price war Primark cannot afford to sit out
The competitive logic is not hard to follow. Shein sells dresses for £3. According to Mintel research from July 2025, 32% of women aged 16–34 who buy clothes online had shopped at Shein in the previous year. Primark has more than 190 UK stores and no home-delivery service. It is fighting a price war on terrain that heavily favours its opponents.
Retail analyst Natalie Berg puts it plainly: ‘When Shein is selling dresses for £3, you’ve got to respond, right?’ Her read is that Primark is borrowing a page from the supermarket playbook, using cut-price staples like jeans and socks as loss leaders to pull shoppers through the door, then relying on the impulse-purchase nature of the store to fill baskets with higher-margin items.
Mintel analyst Bridget McCusker describes the move as a ‘marketing exercise’ rather than a structural repricing. The price reductions do not cover everything Primark sells. About 85% of its products are already £10 or less, according to Primark’s latest annual report, which leaves limited room for manoeuvre at the bottom of the range without damaging margins altogether.
AJ Bell analyst Russ Mould adds another dimension: the price changes ‘will help them shift stock, meaning they don’t have to discount too much any further.’ Inventory control matters at a retailer where the business model depends on keeping unsold stock to an absolute minimum.
Primark price cuts arrive at a delicate moment for ABF
The trading backdrop that prompted this announcement is uncomfortable reading. Associated British Foods’ September 2025 trading update confirmed that Primark’s total like-for-like sales in the second half of fiscal 2025 were expected to be around 2% below the prior year. Underlying sales in the Christmas quarter fell 2.7%, according to company announcements as reported by the Wall Street Journal, which prompted ABF’s shares to slump as much as 12% to 1,966 pence, their lowest in five months.
There was some recovery. ABF’s January 2026 trading update reported Primark sales growth of around 3%, with like-for-like growth of around 1.7%, in what it called a difficult clothing market. By the third quarter, ending 20 June 2026, UK sales growth had slowed to 1%, with like-for-like sales broadly flat, though Primark continued to gain market share in a market that itself declined. The full-year adjusted operating profit margin is expected to hold at approximately 10%.
None of this is catastrophic. But none of it is comfortable either, particularly given what is coming next.
On 21 April 2026, ABF’s board formally decided to proceed with the demerger of Primark from its food business. Both entities will list on the London Stock Exchange in the Equity Shares (Commercial Companies) category, and given their scale, both are anticipated to become FTSE 100 constituents. The demerger is expected to complete by the end of 2027, at a cost of about £75 million in one-off transaction fees and below £45 million in estimated dis-synergies. Eoin Tonge will lead Primark as a standalone listed company; George Weston stays as chief executive of the food business.
The timing matters. Reuters reports that most analysts’ sum-of-the-parts valuations of ABF show Primark trading at a significant discount to peers. A newly independent Primark will need to tell a credible growth story to public market investors from day one. Arriving at its listing with declining like-for-like sales and a reputation for being less cheap than it once was is not that story.
Cutting prices on core items is partly about Shein, partly about Temu, and partly about making sure the IPO prospectus has something better to say about momentum than the last few trading updates have managed. Berg’s point about staying relevant carries real weight here: ‘When it comes to staying relevant to customers today, you have to offer value for money. Especially if you are meant to be the value fashion retailer in the UK, you have to deliver on that promise.’
The question is whether a selective price cut on jeans and socks is enough to move the needle before Primark faces the scrutiny of its first earnings call as a listed company.
