(Alliance News) - Kingfisher PLC shareholders on Tuesday hit back at the company's remuneration report, with almost a fifth voting against its approval.
At the home improvement retailer's annual general meeting on Tuesday, 24% of shareholders voted against the level of director pay.
"At Kingfisher we believe in proper alignment between pay and performance and our remuneration policy is designed to achieve this over the long term while incentivising the delivery of the ONE Kingfisher strategy," the company said.
Kingfisher added: "Over the past year we have engaged extensively with our shareholders, proxy advisors, and shareholder representative organisations in relation to our remuneration arrangements. The views of our shareholders are of paramount importance to the remuneration committee, and therefore the committee intends to consult further with shareholders to understand the specific rationale for any votes against our report."
Kingfisher said its "current understanding" for the votes against the report "were mainly focused" on the assessment of the company's performance in financial 2019.
For the year ended January 31, Kingfisher posted a pretax profit of GBP322 million, less than half the prior year's GBP682 million, mostly due to property-related exceptional items.
Sales amounted to GBP11.69 billion, up just 0.3% from GBP11.66 billion a year ago.
Underlying pretax profit, before transformation costs, fell 13% to GBP693 million from GBP797 million, broadly in line with analyst consensus which had expected a 14% drop to GBP685 million.
Finally, retail profit reduced 11% to GBP753 million from GBP849 million, though this was marginally above analyst expectations of GBP744 million.
Kingfisher noted its annual bonus policy was reduced at its 2016 AGM to 80% of salary from 200% salary.
"We are therefore keen to listen to our shareholders about how we evolve the operation of the annual awards and their relationship with short-term financial performance over forthcoming months. Kingfisher will publish an update on that engagement within six months of the 2019 AGM," added Kingfisher.
Kingfisher shares closed 1.2% lower on Tuesday in London at 218.23 pence each.
Kingfisher (KGF)