Wickes, Tile Giant & Toolstation ‘outperformed in 2012’, says TP

Full-year preliminary figures from Travis Perkins show that its consumer division (which predominantly comprises the Wickes business) significantly outperformed in 2012, with Wickes, Tile Giant and Toolstation businesses all producing excellent results.

Division turnover increased by 13.2% to reach £1,152 million, up from £1,018 million in 2011.

Travis Perkins said:

“The consumer division markets were the hardest hit of any that our divisions operate in, so that makes the result achieved in 2012 even more encouraging. A combination of careful margin management, strong overhead control and targeted investment resulted in profits rising by 40.7% whilst turnover on a reported basis was up only 13.2%. If Toolstation is excluded from the 2012 result, divisional turnover was flat year-on-year, whilst profits increased by 26.5%.

“Overheads were well controlled throughout the division with the ratio of overheads to sales for Wickes and Tile Giant increasing by only 0.1% despite turnover remaining flat. Wickes like-for-like costs fell as a result of changing the store colleague structure late in 2011 and from re-targeting marketing spend.

On trading so far this year, the company said:

“It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the first few weeks of trading because the January 2012 comparator was quite strong whilst 2013 has seen a continuation of the poor weather conditions experienced in 2012. Overall group like-for-like sales, on a delivered basis, for the first seven weeks were down 5.1%. We view underlying like-for-like sales in February as broadly flat.”

See the full results in our Industry Articles pages: http://www.insightdiy.co.uk/articles.asp

Source : Insight DIY, Travis Perkins
www.travisperkinsplc.co.uk