Dixons pays to offload Pixmania Dixons Retail, the UK's largest electronics retailer by sales and owner of high-street brands Currys and PC World, is to dispose of its lossmaking online trading business Pixmania. The company, which also updated the market on its first-quarter trading, said it had received an offer for the division from Mutares, the German industrial group. Under the terms of the bid, Dixons will provide £58m to support Pixmania. News of the disposal, which will allow Dixons to focus on its UK operations, sent the shares 10 per cent higher on Thursday morning to 48.7p. Pixmania operates in France and the Czech Republic and has been a long-running lossmaker among Dixons divisions. The retailer was forced to write down the value of Pixmania by £135m at the end of its financial year and in June said it was exploring options for Pixmania, including a sale or closure of the business. Dixons said like-for-like sales - those which exclude the impact of stores open for less than a year - had risen 2 per cent in the three months to July 31 compared with the same period a year earlier. "Despite a July that was sizzling in the north [of Europe] and chilly in the south - affecting electronics and air conditioning sales respectively for that month - we have had an encouraging start to the year," said Sebastian James, Dixons" chief executive. Margins have held up reasonably well across the group despite some anticipated and vigorous skirmishes in the Nordics where, I am happy to say, we have continued to grow market share. Dixons also announced on Thursday that it had agreed to sell its ElectroWorld operations in Turkey to Bimeks, one of the country's leading electrical specialist retailers.