DIY giant Kingfisher has tightened its full-year profit guidance after sales remained flat in the three months to October 2024.
Kingfisher said its total sales were flat at £3.2bn on a constant currency basis and fell 0.6% on a reported basis in the three months to October 31.
Like-for-like sales fell 1.1% “in line or ahead of the market for all our key banners” with ”solid underlying trading in August and September” but a ”weak market and consumer in the UK and France in October, impacted by uncertainty related to government budgets in both countries”.
In the UK and Ireland, like-for-like sales increased 0.4% driven by Screwfix (+1.8%) and TradePoint (+4.9%), with strong market share gains and growth of B&Q’s ecommerce marketplace.
The retailer narrowed its full-year profit guidance as it expects the near-term market outlook to remain uncertain. Kingfisher said it expects adjusted profit before tax in the range of £510m to £540m as compared to the previously guided range of £510m to £550m.
Chief executive 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. 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.
“We continue to deliver rapid progress against our strategic and operational objectives. Ecommerce sales penetration increased by 1.3 percentage points to 18.8% in Q3, supported by the continued strong growth of our marketplaces. In Q3, our trade sales penetration reached 16.5% across the group excluding Screwfix, up nearly three percentage points from the start of the year, as we continued to develop our trade proposition, including the launch of TradePoint’s first mobile app last month. We are also making strong progress with our plan to restructure and modernise Castorama France’s lowest-performing stores, having selected partners for our first two franchised stores.
“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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