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LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - British home improvement
retailer Kingfisher on Wednesday reported a 6.4% fall in
underlying first half profit, mainly hurt by the weak
performance of its French operation, underlining the task ahead
for its new chief executive.
Kingfisher is in the fourth year of a five-year programme
that was designed to boost earnings. However, profits went
backwards in 2018-19 and the group said in March it would part
company with Véronique Laury, its CEO since 2014.
She exits next week and will be succeeded by Carrefour
veteran Thierry Garnier.
Kingfisher's shares have fallen 24% over the last year and
some analysts believe the firm is vulnerable to a possible bid
from private equity.
The group, whose main businesses are B&Q and Screwfix in
Britain and Castorama and Brico Depot in France and elsewhere,
said it made an underlying pretax profit of 353 million pounds
in the six months to July 31. While that was ahead of analysts'
average forecast of 342 million pounds, it was down from 377
million pounds made in the same period last year.
Total sales fell 0.9% on a constant currency basis to 6
billion pounds. Like-for-like sales were down 1.8%, with growth
in Screwfix, Poland and Romania offset by B&Q and France.
Kingfisher said its outlook by geography remained mixed,
highlighting continued uncertainty around UK consumer demand.
It maintained its forecast for a flat gross margin for the
full 2019-20 year.
Prior to Wednesday's update analysts were on average
forecasting a 2019-20 underlying pretax profit of 658 million
pounds, down from 693 million pounds made in 2018-19.
(Reporting by James Davey
Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kate Holton)
