UK DIY News

Kingfisher : COVID-19 Response

In addition to today's update on Q4 and current trading, Kingfisher has issued the following update:

COVID-19 response
Following on from our announcement on 16 March 2020, regarding the impact of the COVID19 pandemic on our business, the following update is provided.

Managing operational and financial risk
Kingfisher’s central and retail business crisis committees continue to confer daily to monitor
and manage risks and impacts of COVID-19. We have also increased IT security measures
across the Group.

Kingfisher continues to closely monitor the financial impact of COVID-19 and has launched
multiple cash flow mitigation actions.

Colleagues and customers
Kingfisher is committed to supporting local authorities and governments to managing the
COVID-19 pandemic.
As further government guidelines are released, we continue to implement additional actions to protect the health and safety of our employees. Social distancing and other measures are being rolled out across our stores and corporate offices, along with extensive work from home arrangements where appropriate.

Supply chain and availability
Kingfisher has global sourcing offices in China, other Asian countries and Europe.
Approximately 25% of our total annual cost of goods sold (COGS) are directly sourced from
Asia. We also source from Eastern and Western Europe as part of our supply chain. In China, nearly all our vendors’ factories have reopened, with capacity starting to rebuild.

Over 85% of placed orders have a less than 4-week delay against their original schedule. In Europe, vendor factories in Italy have either closed or are expected to soon close, following the recent announcement by the Italian government. In addition, there is uncertainty over how goods can be transported within the wider region. We are closely engaging with our suppliers in this regard.

The overall risk to product availability is currently considered to be manageable.

Temporary store closures
We are focused on making sure that we can continue to serve our customer’s essential needs in our markets as effectively as possible, while protecting the health and security of all. The status in each of our markets is as follows:

• France. Following several government decisions in France, while Kingfisher’s stores
in France have been declared ‘essential’ (and therefore eligible to remain open), we
decided to close temporarily all our 221 stores from 15 March in order to comply with
the 15-day confinement period announced by the French government. Our ecommerce websites remain open for home delivery across France. In addition, from
today, a large number of our stores will start to offer click & collect services via ‘drivethrough’, as we operate as best we can to serve the essential needs of our
communities.

• Spain. All 28 stores in Spain have also closed until and including Sunday 29 March,
following the government’s declaration of a 2-week state of emergency.
Our stores in the UK remain open, serving the needs of our communities for electricity,
heating, plumbing and other home essentials. We are putting measures in place to ensure
we can run stores safely, for customers and our people, including restricting the number of
people in store at any one time, reducing store opening hours, strict social distancing rules,
and protective measures at checkouts. In addition, we are boosting our online home delivery and click & collect capacity, including via a new ‘drive-through’ option to enable customers to collect their purchases whilst minimising contact.

As of 22 March, all our stores in Ireland, Poland, Romania, Portugal and Russia remain open, with similar measures as in the UK.