29 January 2020
Travis Perkins plc
Wickes - Q4 2019 Trading update and Capital Markets Day
Continued strong performance across both Core and DIFM (Do-it-for-me)
Travis Perkins
In December 2018, the Travis Perkins Group announced a strategic plan formulated around two key pillars; to focus on its advantaged trade businesses, and to simplify the Group to enable a more streamlined cost structure and faster decision making. In line with these strategic aims, and following a significant improvement in the financial performance of the Wickes business in the first half of 2019, the Group announced in July 2019 the intention to demerge Wickes.
Acting as separate listed entities will enable the management team of each company to focus on delivering a distinct business plan to deliver the best service to their primary customer base, allocating capital and resources in the optimum way to deliver sustainable returns.
Wickes
Today, the Wickes management team is hosting a capital markets presentation to set out its strategy as a digitally-led, service-enabled home improvement business, together with updating the market on sales performance for the final quarter of 2019.
At the event, the Wickes management team will provide detail on the investment case, which will include an overview of the unique customer proposition, financial framework and vision for growth across both Core (Local Trade and DIY) and DIFM (Do-it-for-me).
Wickes delivered like for like sales growth of 4.5% in Q4 driven by continued strong performance across both Core and DIFM. For the full year, like-for-like sales growth was 8.7% and total sales grew by 7.7%.
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Q4 2019 sales growth
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Core
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DIFM
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Wickes(1)
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Like-for-like sales growth
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5.1%
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3.2%
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4.5%
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Total sales growth
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4.2%
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1.7%
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3.4%
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YTD 2019 sales growth
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Core
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DIFM
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Wickes
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Like-for-like sales growth
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6.5%
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14.1%
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8.7%
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Total sales growth
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5.7%
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12.8%
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7.7%
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Two-year total sales LFL growth
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4.0%
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David Wood, Wickes CEO, commented:
"I am delighted to report a strong sales performance for Wickes in Q4 and for the full year, setting us up well for the intended demerger from Travis Perkins, which remains on track for Q2 2020.
"I would like to thank all my colleagues for their hard work, dedication and focus on delivering for our customers, which has driven excellent performance across the year. We are looking forward to our future as a standalone business, building towards our vision of a Wickes project in every home, allowing us to create long-term value for all our stakeholders.
"We have great confidence in our strategy, which is centred around our strong brand, a distinctive and hard to replicate customer proposition, a uniquely balanced business and a low cost and efficient operating model. We are pleased with the growth Wickes is delivering and confident in our ability to continue to grow. We look forward to providing more detail on this at today's Capital Markets Day."
The presentation and a webcast of the event will be made available from 12.45pm GMT via www.travisperkinsplc.co.uk/investors. An on-demand recording of the event will also be published on the 30th January. There will be no new disclosures on current trading conditions.
Investor / analyst enquiries
Graeme Barnes | +44 7469 401819 | graeme.barnes@travisperkins.co.uk (Travis Perkins)
Zak Newmark | +44 7384 432560 | zak.newmark@wickes.co.uk (Wickes)
Media enquiries
Justin Griffiths, James White | Powerscourt | +44 20 7250 1446 (Travis Perkins)
Lucy Legh, Henry Wallers | Headland | +44 20 3805 4822 (Wickes)
Footnotes
- Wickes Q4 like-for-like and total sales growth for the 13 week period ended 28 December 2019 compared to the 13 week period ended 29 December 2018.
