Millions of electronic stock has been stolen from JB Hi-Fi stores in the last year, it emerged this week.

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JB noted “increased shrinkage levels” or theft of over $12 million of stock from JB stores in the past year, which it said impacted on gross margin by 13 bps.

This marks an increase in theft by $4m since last year.

3% of the total Aussie retail turnover of $240 billion is attributed to theft, according to Australian Retailers Association and its on the rise, ARA Exec Director told Channel News.

Headphones and DVD’s  were said to be among the items popular with thieves, scanning the aisles of JB’s stores.

JB Hi-FI blamed it on staff roster changes and less staff on the floor as it looks to drive productivity levels.

However, a large number of JB stores are located specifically in high footfall areas – like Westfield on Pitt St, Sydney and three stores on Elizabeth St, in Melbourne CBD- meaning its store traffic is huge, particulalrly in larger stores.

JB were not available for comment at the time of writing.

“Management conceded that an ongoing side-effect of driving productivity from existing staff (roster changes) was higher levels of stock shrinkage (theft),” RBS Equities analyst Daniel Broeren said in a research note.

“Comments on the call suggested less staff on the sales floor, particularly during quiet trading periods, had contributed to the $4 million increase in shrinkage, which in turn had reduced the gross profit margin by 13 basis points in FY12

“In our view, total annual shrinkage of $12.2 million (FY12) is now a significant detractor from EBIT. We note the roster changes came into effect in 2H12, and hence higher year-on-year shrinkage costs could be seen in 1H13.

“In store productivity improved as labour rosters were driven to align with individual store sales.”

Theft costs retailers more than $7.5 billion each year, according to ARA and is highest in NSW ($2.3 bn), VIC ($1.9 bn) QLD ($1.5 bn) and WA ($845.7m).