Halfords boosted by autocentres performance
Halfords grew its group revenue by 2.7% year-on-year in its third quarter after like-for-like sales climbed by 2.2%. On a two-year basis like-for-like and total sales were up 10.4% and 13.9% respectively.
The company said the uplifts were driven by a strong performance at its autocentres, services and B2B businesses.
In the 13 weeks to 31 December, like-for-like retail sales rose by 5.6%, although total sales were down 1.8%. Halfords said strong sales in the first half of the period softened pre-Christmas as the emergence of the Omicron Covid-19 variant began to have an impact on customer behaviour.
Meanwhile, total sales at the retailer’s autocentres climbed by 90.2% as like-for-like sales grew by 33.1%
Graham Stapleton, Halfords chief executive, said: “These results demonstrate the strength of our motoring services offer, and the outstanding performance from our autocentres business confirms the rationale behind our recent acquisitions. With the recent addition of National to the group, motoring will represent more than 70% of our revenue, and we expect to carry out 7.5 million motoring servicing jobs a year.”.
Halfords is continuing to target a full year underlying pre-tax profit of between £80 million and £90 million.
Looking ahead, the company said: “We remain confident that our ongoing strategic investment will continue to build resilience and underpin future growth, and we look forward to building on our progress to date.”
