B&Q owner Kingfisher finds insulation against DIY decline

DIY boss wants the chancellor to prioritise help for the poorest but his call is likely to be ignored, says James Moore

B&Q owner Kingfisher has reported a 30 per cent drop in profits (PA)

Kingfisher is finding there are fewer DIY fish in the pond than it might have hoped. The group, which owns B&Q and Screwfix in the UK, took something of a beating on the stock market after its interim results revealed a 30 per cent tumble in first-half profits.

The shares recovered somewhat after the company and its people did the rounds with their DIY PR fixit kits, hammering home the message that trading so far has been more resilient than parts of the city had initially given Kingfisher credit for.

They were at pains to stress that sales were still 16.6 per cent above pre-pandemic levels on a “like-for-like” basis, an industry-favoured metric that focuses on stores open at least a year. “Very resilient,” is how CEO Theirry Garnier described this.