Despite challenging market conditions, national retailer Wickes saw positive revenue growth across 2024, and says it has managed to considerably slow the decline in its design and install business.
In its full year trading update for 2024, which was published today, Wickes said the year saw it generate retail revenue of roughly £1.2bn, marking year-on-year growth of almost 2% for the retailer.
The second half of the year was much more successful for Wickes than the first six months, seeing 3% growth year-on-year in the latter half of the year, compared to 1% for the first six months of 2024.
According to Wickes, it saw particularly strong performance in interior paint, decorative accessories and garden projects. The retailer’s TradePro business also continued to perform strongly, with sales reportedly up by 14% year-on-year in the second half of the year. Additionally, Wickes said its number of active TradePro members has increased by 19% year-on-year to 581,000.
Wickes said its design and install business “continues to improve, with the decline in revenue slowing considerably”. Although admitting that big ticket purchases “remain challenging”, the retailer still made design revenue of £326.5m across the whole of 2024.
Specifically, the retailer saw a concerning 17% year-on-year decline in revenue in the first six months of the year, but managed to mitigate this to decline of just 2% for the back half of 2024.
Across the year, this equates to revenue decline of 10.5%, however Wickes says its design & install sales improved across the second half of the year, which was thanks to a number of actions it took to improve its customer experience during 2024.
In July of last year, Wickes said it was looking to reduce its number of kitchen and bathroom advisors as it wanted to streamline the customer experience, with up to 200 roles at risk of being cut.
In today’s trading update, Wickes also said: “While the market environment for larger ticket purchases remains challenging and the outlook uncertain, the changes we made to the business enabled ordered sales to move into year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter. Delivered sales saw a LFL improvement from -13.3% in Q3 to -3.1% in Q4.”
This is consistent with Wickes financial reports from October 2024, in which the retailer reported seeing disappointing results for its design & install business, but insisted that the decline was “slowing” and “stabilising”.
Combining both retail and design & install orders, Wickes closed out 2024 with revenue of more than £1.5bn, equating to a slight 1% decrease in year-on-year revenue. In the first six months of the year, Wickes saw an unfortunate 3.4% revenue decline, but enjoyed growth of almost 2% in the last six months of 2024.
Although its profits for the year were not released in this report, Wickes anticipates its adjusted profit before tax for 2024 to be “towards the upper end of the £39.7-£44.0m consensus forecast range”. The actual figure is scheduled to be published in the second half of March 2025.
Reflecting on the results, David Wood, Wickes’ CEO, said that the growth proves the business’ model continues to deliver. He commented: “We’ve grown sales and volumes in Retail, and TradePro had yet another period of double-digit sales growth, as local tradespeople continue to choose us to save them time and money.
“Meanwhile, measures we took to improve our offer in Design & Installation have enabled us to return to ordered sales growth. We expect to deliver FY24 profit towards the upper end of the forecast range and looking to the year ahead we are well positioned to outperform the market as we continue to invest in our strategic growth levers.”
