B&Q sales drop 9% in Q1

Sales for B&Q have dropped by 9% to £828 million in Q1 compared with the previous year. Sister company Screwfix has seen an increase in like-for-like sales of 3.6% to £395m.

Kingfisher UK and Ireland has reported a 3.7% drop in total sales. B&Q and Screwfix, like Travis Perkins and Bunnings and Homebase, attribute the drop in sales over Q1 due to difficult weather conditions at the start of the year.

Véronique Laury, chief executive officer, said: “It was a challenging start to the year with exceptionally harsh weather across Europe and weak UK consumer demand. This impacted footfall, especially sales of weather related categories. February and March were particularly affected with sales improving over the course of April and into May.”

B&Q’s decline in sales are also attributed to “lower footfall and soft demand patterns.” Both Screwfix and B&Q had snow related temporary store closures at the start of the year

Total group turnover for its operation in the UK and Europe were down 4% to £2.83 billion.

The group also reported that for B&Q, in the financial year ending January 31, 2018, 4% of its total sales of £3.49bn were online, which included its home delivery service.

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