Kingfisher tightens full year profit guidance
Home improvement group Kingfisher has tightened its full year profit guidance after reporting that its third quarter sales edged down 0.6% to £3.22 billion.
In the three months to 31 October, like-for-like sales at B&Q dropped by 0.6% as trading was supported by ecommerce and trade sales, and a sequential improvement in sales to retail customers.
In contrast, like-for-like sales at Screwfix rose by 1.8% as the retailer benefited from “robust” demand from trade customers.
Meanwhile, like-for-like sales in France, where Kingfisher operates the Castorama and Brico Dépôt brands, declined by 4.3% on a like-for-like basis due to weak consumer sentiment and adverse weather.
Thierry Garnier, Kingfisher chief executive, said: “Overall trading in the third quarter was resilient. Improved performance in August and September was offset by the impact of increased consumer uncertainty in the UK and France in October, related to government budgets in both countries.
“All our banners in the UK, France and Poland performed in line or ahead of their respective markets, with particularly strong market share gains at Screwfix.
“We continued to see improved volume trends in our core categories, supported by repairs, maintenance and existing home renovation. As expected, sales of our ‘big-ticket’ categories remained soft, although we are seeing early signs of improvement.”
Giving an update on more current trading, Kingfisher said there had been an improvement with group like-for-like sales down 0.5% in the three weeks to 23 November.
Having tightened its full year profit guidance range, the group now expects to achieve an adjusted pre-tax profit of around £510 million to £540 million compared to a previous guidance of £510 million to £550 million.
Garnier said: “Looking towards next year, recent political and macroeconomic developments have layered incremental uncertainty onto the near-term outlook in our markets.
“And so we continue to focus our energy on what we can control – delivering further market share gains through our key strategic priorities, and managing our retail prices, costs and cash effectively.
“As a group, we are strongly positioned to benefit from the inflection to come within home improvement.”
