Kingfisher has lowered its full-year profit guidance after reporting a flat third quarter, as consumer uncertainty in the UK and France weighed on sales.
The B&Q and Screwfix owner reported total sales of £3.2bn for the quarter to 31 October, a 0.6% decline, while like-for-like sales slipped 1.1%.
While sales performance was solid in August and September, October saw a slowdown, driven by uncertainty in the UK and France related to government budgets and adverse weather conditions.
In the UK & Ireland, Kingfisher saw a mixed performance across its brands. Screwfix delivered strong results, with like-for-like sales rising 1.8% and sales growth of 4.6%, while B&Q experienced a decline of 1.0% in sales, with a LFL dip of 0.6%. TradePoint, B&Q’s trade-focused business. performed well, with like-for-like sales growth of 4.9%.
CEO Thierry Garnier 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.”
Kingfisher’s core categories, representing 69% of sales, showed improved trends, driven by repair, maintenance, and renovation activity. However, ‘big-ticket’ categories, which make up 16% of sales, continued to be soft, though signs of improvement were noted.
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During the period commerce continued to perform strongly, with B&Q’s online marketplace growing by 45% year-on-year and reaching 41% of B&Q’s total ecommerce sales in October.
Kingfisher said its total ecommerce sales penetration increased by 1.3 percentage points to 18.8%.
Looking ahead, the B&Q owner tightened its full-year profit guidance, with adjusted pre-tax profit now expected to be between £510m and £540m, down slightly from the previous range of £510m to £550m.
Garnier added: “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.”
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