Kingfisher raises annual targets slightly after stable first half

The owner of the Castorama, Brico Dépôt, B&Q and Screwfix brands – which has some 2.000 stores in eight countries, mainly in the UK, Ireland, France and Poland – saw its turnover fall by 1,8% to £6,75 billion in the first half to July 31.

Its net profit stood at 237 million pounds, almost stable at -0,2%, according to a press release.

"Overall, our business is in line with our expectations. Customers have continued to carry out repair, maintenance and renovation work in their homes" - categories at the "heart" of the group's business - while "demand for the +project+ categories has remained low, in line with what we are seeing on the market", commented Thierry Garnier, the group's CEO, quoted in the press release.

For its 2024/25 financial year, Kingfisher announced that it had "refined" its earnings target and "revised upwards" its free cash flow target.

The group is now targeting adjusted net profit before tax of between £510 million and £550 million, compared to a previously announced range of between £490 million and £550 million. In its 2023/24 financial year, Kingfisher had recorded adjusted net profit before tax of £568 million.

"We announced in March that we would make 120 million pounds of savings, and we are fully on track to achieve [them]," Thierry Garnier said during a conference call with journalists.

During the first half, sales in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Poland were almost stable while they fell by 7,2% in France, "reflecting the weakness of the general consumer environment," commented Mr. Garnier.

At the end of March, the group announced a "profitability plan" to improve the performance of Castorama in France, whose turnover for the half-year fell by 7,7%. "Castorama is making rapid progress in restructuring and modernizing its least performing stores," the press release highlights.

Beyond physical points of sale, one of the group's priorities is "the development of e-commerce: online sales increased by a little over 8% in the first half of the year and now 18,3% of our sales come from e-commerce" compared to "around 7% in 2019", underlined Thierry Garnier.

He also indicated that his "fast home delivery service in England +Screwfix Sprint+ covered almost 50% of English cities for which we guarantee delivery in 1 hour, we are the only ones to do this. We have also decided to test delivery in less than 30 minutes with Deliveroo in London for Screwfix and B&Q on around 500 references".