Kingfisher has announced its financial results for the year to January 31, 2013, revealing a 2.4% sales drop, bringing total revenue to £10.6bn. Pre-tax profits nose-dived by 11% to £715m, while like-for-likes fell 2.9%.
For B&Q, total sales across UK and Ireland fell by 3.6%, a drop of 5.6% LfL, due to "a declining market impacted by weak consumer confidence and record adverse summer weather." The drop, which clocked total revenue up at £3.7bn, was also blamed on the "particularly challenging environment" in Ireland. This accounted for the nine Irish B&Qs incurring losses of £7m over the year, and now being subject to examinership.

Retail profit plummeted by 20.8% to £187m, and gross margins were down 20 bps. Sales of outdoor seasonal products were down around 9% at B&Q with average footfall down 20% during the severely weather-affected weeks. Sales of building products were also impacted by the bad weather. Indoor decorative products fared better as customers switched home improvement activities indoors.

It was a brighter picture at Screwfix, where sales grew by 9.8% to £577m, benefitting from continued rollout of new outlets, the success of click, pay and collect, and a redesigned catalogue. Retail profit at Screwfix was up 33.9% to £47m, reflecting the strong sales growth.

Sixty new outlets were opened, bringing the total up to 275. Plans are in place to open a further 50 Screwfix stores this year.

Commenting on Kingfisher's overall performance, chief executive Ian Cheshire said: "We have had a tough year, impacted by unfavourable foreign exchange, record adverse weather in the UK and declining underlying markets in each of our three key territories.

"Whilst we have been unable to fully offset these headwinds, the hard work of our teams and our firm focus on our established programme of self-help initiatives means we ended the year in good shape with net cash on the balance sheet, higher market share and having generated economic return for our shareholders.

"During the course of the year, we have developed our wider management team, mostly through internal promotions, and we have made excellent progress with the first year of our self-help plan, 'Creating the Leader', a plan supporting both the short term whilst building the business for the longer term.

"Looking ahead, although we expect market conditions to remain challenging, we will continue to actively manage the business, optimising the generation and use of cash and driving longer term success through our own actions. I remain very confident in our prospects, with clear initiatives underway to make it easier for our customers to have better and more sustainable homes."