Kingfisher Weekly/Monthly Trading Summary

Kingfisher has reported on its Q1 trading figures and provided a monthly and weekly trading comparison since 1 February 2020.

Q1 20/21 LFL sales by month

March, April and May to-date LFL sales by week

Up to 14 March (pre-coronavirus lockdown measures)

As previously announced, trading from 1 February up to 14 March (before any COVID-related store closures) continued the positive trends we saw in Q4 19/20, benefiting from operational improvements in France and a new trading approach across the Group, including local trading events.

In February 2020, Group LFL sales growth was +7.6%, or +2.3% excluding the leap year impact. In France, we performed slightly better than the market(9) in February.

In the first two weeks of March (up to and including 14 March) Group LFL sales continued to be positive, with growth across all businesses within our core markets, strongly supported by e-commerce sales.

Weekly trading since 14 March

In the third week of March, the UK continued to see positive LFL sales growth, France was severely impacted by the closure of all its stores and Poland experienced lower footfall and sales. The fourth week of March was impacted by UK store closures following the government’s announcement on 23 March, together with lower footfall in Romania.

The first week of April reflected the first full week of store closures in both the UK and France, although we saw an increasing contribution from e-commerce sales in France. The trend improved in the second and third weeks of April as e-commerce sales increased week-on-week in the UK and France. Furthermore, in France we started to reopen some of our stores’ Building & Joinery external courtyards in the third week of April.

The fourth week of April reflected a significant improvement in the UK at both B&Q and Screwfix, largely due to increasing demand via contactless click & collect, and the reopening of some B&Q stores towards the end of the week. In addition, the trend in France improved as we opened more of our stores’ Building & Joinery external courtyards. Poland experienced growth as lockdown measures started to be eased.

In the final week of April and first week of May, the Group LFL sales trend continued to improve due to phased store reopenings in the UK and France (as noted in the ‘Operational status by market’ above). Sales growth in the first week of May was largely driven by exceptional demand at B&Q and Castorama Poland.

Kingfisher's latest update on Q1 trading and the impact of COVID-19 can be found here.

Kingfisher France and Other International market update can be found here.  

Source : Kingfisher

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