Wickes parent company, Travis Perkins (TP), has announced an 18.7% increase in pre-tax profits, but warned of a slowdown in market growth.
The Northampton-based company reported pre-tax profits of £261.4m and revenue up 15.1% to £3.187m.

Its chief executive, Geoff Cooper, said: "The strong results accelerated expansion of the group and we are well placed to continue progress in what we expect to be a more challenging market in 2008."

At Wickes, which TP acquired in 2005, like-for-like (lfl) sales of its core products were up 7.5%, while its showroom – 'big ticket – sales fell by 4.6%. Overall lfl sales were up 5.5%.
Wickes now trades from 185 stores.

The results showed that Wickes' newly developed transactional website has broken even within its first 12 months and is now a regular among the top 10 stores in weekly takings.

· Don't miss a full report and analysis of the results in the March 14 issue of DIY Week.