Kingfisher Plc – the group behind B&Q, Castorama, TradePoint and Screwfix – has stressed that “recent political and macroeconomic developments have layered incremental uncertainty” on customer spending.
Its latest trading update, for the three months ending 31 October 2024, reported an overall drop in sales of 0.6%. Screwfix was able to achieve a nearly 2% LFL jump in sales, as trade sales penetration reached 16.5% across the group.
However, the lack of big ticket sales saw a LFL drop of 4.0% across B&Q, Brico Dépôt France and Castorama Poland.
“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,” explained Thierry Garnier, chief executive officer of Kingfisher.
“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.”
Furthermore, ecommerce growth continued for the group, with online sales penetration increasing by 1.3%pts to 18.8% in Q3. This was supported by the continued strong growth of its marketplaces, B&Q’s marketplace saw GMV +45%.
Learn more about Screwfix in an exclusive company profile in the newly published RetailDNA Customer Value Chain 2024 report.
The profile looks at how the trade supplies business attracts high numbers of customers through multichannel services, delivered via its stores, website and mobile app. Screwfix offers a level of service at every customer touchpoint that is rewarded in the volume metric of the Customer Value Chain, where it is ranked Top50.
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