Wickes Group H1 2025 Earnings Report

Wickes Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 10
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Wickes Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Wickes Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 9/10/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, September 10, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 3:30AM ET

Wickes is one of the UK’s best known home improvement retailers. Having opened our first store in 1972 we now have 228 stores across the UK, employing 7,400 colleagues and offering products ranging from kitchens and bathrooms, to paint, tools and timber. Wickes is a successful, growing, cash generative and profitable business, operating in the large and growing £27 billion UK Home Improvement market. Over the past few years Wickes has consistently outperformed the market, growing share and delivering a CAGR growth rate double that of the market. At Wickes, we have a clear purpose, which is to ‘help the nation feel house proud’, and we do this by focusing on our three customer segments - Local Trade, Do-it-for-me and DIY retail. Our highly distinctive proposition, balanced across these three customer segments, means that we can capture the full breadth of the market growth opportunity as Wickes is much more than just a DIY business. Our business is digitally led and service enabled, fulfilled by a low cost, efficient and totally integrated operating model. With over 5 million online customers, almost two thirds of all sales emanate in the digital space. However, as 98% of sales are fulfilled directly from our physical estate this ensures that we benefit from digital growth without digital dilution. We have proven levers for growth across our three customer segments of Local Trade, Do-it-for-me and DIY Retail and are committed to ensuring that our growth is delivered responsibly, minimising our impact on the environment, supporting the communities we serve and creating a winning culture where our colleagues can gain new skills and build their careers. Wickes CEO, David Wood: “Wickes' unique proposition, digital capability and efficient operating model has enabled us to respond rapidly to the changing demands of our customers. We are able to provide customers with everything they need to achieve their home improvement plans and we are well placed to capitalise on the exciting growth opportunities we see in our markets while creating long-term value for all our stakeholders.”

Wickes Group H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Company reported 5.6% revenue growth to £848m and a 17% increase in adjusted PBT to £27.3m in H1 2025.
• Positive Sentiment: Retail sales rose 6.8% and design & installation sales were up 2.1%, with Q2 marking the first like-for-like sales growth in D&I since Q2 2023.
• Positive Sentiment: Record market share gains saw Wickes at ~6% of a £27 billion market, backed by plans to expand to 250–260 stores.
• Positive Sentiment: Management declared an interim dividend of 3.6 pence and is executing a £20 million share buyback, supported by a strong £158 million cash balance.
• Negative Sentiment: Cost inflation of £8.7 million in H1 outpaced £5.5 million of productivity savings, creating headwinds that will carry into H2.

Presentation

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Good morning, and thank you for taking the time to join us today. I'd also like to welcome everyone who is watching via the webcast. I'm here with our CFO, Mark George, and we're delighted to share with you our first half results for 2025. We'll spend the next 20 minutes or so taking you through the performance of the business, broader market trends, and highlighting the great progress we are making on executing our strategic plans. I'm pleased to report that both our retail and our design & installation business have had a strong first half. Our retail business has continued its volume-led sales recovery trajectory, resulting in record market share. The self-help actions we took last year and earlier this year to transform our design & installation business are resulting in increased project volumes, a return to like-for-like sales growth, and driving market outperformance.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

This sales growth, plus our productivity plans, are driving operational leverage. A 5.6% increase in group revenue, combined with our productivity savings, which has helped to offset inflation, has resulted in a 17% increase in adjusted profit before tax of £27.3 million. We continue to pursue growth through targeted investments. When it comes to our store estate in the first half, we opened one of the five to seven new stores planned for the year and refitted a further four stores with more refits to come in the second half. This year, we have stepped up our investment in tech to underpin and advance our growth and productivity plans. Mark and I will share more on this later. Of course, we continue to invest in product innovation with new ranges in retail and some great stylish kitchen and bathroom ranges that are proving very popular with customers.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

We are delivering attractive returns to shareholders and have announced today an interim dividend of 3.6p, whilst the £20 million share buyback that we announced in March is ongoing. Before I hand over to Mark, I'm pleased to say that we remain comfortable with market expectations and our overall outlook for adjusted PBT remains unchanged. Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my colleagues for their incredible work in delivering these results and providing great customer service. I'll now hand over to Mark to take you through the numbers in a little more detail.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. As David mentioned, we've had a strong first half with good growth in sales and profits. On this page, we have some of the headlines. Revenue for the half was £848 million, up 5.6% versus H1 2024. Within that, retail was up 6.8%, and design & installation delivered sales up 2.1%. We've had strong profit flow-through with gross margin up 79 basis points and a 17% increase in PBT to £27.3 million. We continue to operate with a strong balance sheet, ending the half with £158 million of cash. This performance and strong balance sheet have enabled us to continue delivering good returns to shareholders. As David mentioned, we're announcing this morning an interim dividend of £0.036 per share, and we continue to buy shares back in our £20 million buyback program.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

We'll break out more detail in the next few slides, but here we have a summary of our P&L. As I mentioned, we grew sales in both retail and design & installation, in total increasing revenue by £45 million versus the first half last year. Gross margin rate increased by 79 basis points as a result of volume growth, category mix, and lower consumer credit costs in our D&I business, which when combined with the sales growth resulted in the pound's gross profit increasing 7.9% year on year. Operating costs increased by 7%. A good productivity program enabled us to mitigate some, but not all, of the significant cost headwinds that are facing us, in particular the increase in national living wage and national insurance. More on this in a moment.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Overall, this enabled us to deliver a 14% increase in operating profit and a 16.7% increase in adjusted PBT, demonstrating the healthy operational leverage of the business when in growth. Let's look at the P&L drivers in more detail, starting with sales. In the retail side of the business, we continue to deliver really well, most clearly demonstrated in our market share position, which continued to strengthen, and David will touch on this more a little later. Within retail, we saw good positive like-for-like growth driven by both TradePro and DIY. The number of active TradePro members increased to 615,000, and TradePro sales grew by 10%. DIY sales were in mid-single-digit growth. As you can see from the table on the right, this growth in retail like-for-like has, once again, been driven by volume with negligible inflation in the business.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

In design and installation, our sales performance has continued to improve. The order book has been growing consistently since Q4 2024, and with the usual time lag, we are now delivering that revenue, with Q2 being the first quarter of delivered sales growth since Q2 2023. For the first half as a whole, like-for-like growth in design and installation was -1%, with total revenue growing 2.1%, supported by new store openings and SolarFast, which only went like-for-like in June. The profit bridge on this slide helps highlight the key drivers of the 17% growth in PBT. The strong performance in retail margin came from an increase in both sales and margin rate.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

In design and installation, the progression into delivered sales growth in Q2 meant there was a small increase in gross profit in the half, and clearly the trend for D&I is positive and encouraging for the rest of the year. On costs, we've shown here the impact that the strong volume growth has had on our cost base, with around £7 million of volume-related costs. We can then see the impact of inflation, £8.7 million in the half, which is quite a bit higher than on the same chart last year, which showed about £5.5 million of inflation in the first half, reflecting the increasing pressures of national living wage and national insurance coming in the business. Our productivity program delivered £5.5 million of savings, slightly higher than H1 last year, which is encouraging, but clearly, as the chart shows, not enough to completely offset the cost inflation.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

We continue to invest in our business, and investment initiatives that hit the P&L resulted in £5.4 million of incremental costs year on year. In addition to costs relating to new stores and refits, we've also increased the investment in technology. This IT investment is set to increase further in the second half, and David will talk more about this in a moment. Turning to cash, we are a strongly cash-generative business, and even in a challenging economic environment, we can generate cash to reinvest in the business, pay a healthy dividend, and buy back shares. We ended the half with £158 million of cash. Now, as you'll recall, we have seasonality in our working capital cycle, in which we have a significant improvement in working capital in the first half of the year, which then unwinds in the second half.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Now, the working capital position will normalize in the second half of this year in the usual way, but it will leave us with an average cash position across the year well ahead of our December low points. The strong cash flow from our growing profit and our healthy balance sheet gives us flexibility to invest further in growth initiatives, as well as to accelerate the returns to shareholders. On growth, our CapEx plan, which is predominantly invested in new stores and refits, was £9.5 million in the first half and will be between £30 million and £35 million for the year as a whole, with the program clearly back-weighted to the second half. In H1, we returned £25 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and buybacks, and we also spent £11.9 million buying shares for our employee share scheme. Overall, a very healthy cash position.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I'll end with some comments on outlook and guidance. So far in Q3, trading has been in line with our expectations, with all three parts of the business, TradePro, DIY, and design & installation remaining in growth. We expect costs to increase in the second half, with the full effect of the increase in national living wage and national insurance, which only came in in April, plus the back-end weighting of our new store opening program. We'll also be stepping up our investment in technology. For the year as a whole, we'll be spending around £10 million more on SaaS projects, with the costs going through the P&L than we did in 2024. Despite these increases in operating costs, our strong trading performance means that we remain comfortable with consensus expectations for PBT for the year. Now, there's also some technical guidance provided on the slide there.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I won't read it out, but it remains unchanged from what we gave at the beginning of the year. To summarize our position at the half-year point, the business continues to deliver really well, with all three parts of the business delivering good sales growth. Despite significant cost inflation, we're delivering good operational leverage from that strong sales performance, with PBT growing significantly faster than sales. This is enabling us to continue investing in the business and, at the same time, deliver good returns to shareholders. With that, I'll hand back to David.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Thank you, Mark. Now, of course, it wouldn't be a Wickes presentation if I didn't share with you this slide, our growth lever framework. Our sustained market outperformance is a clear demonstration that our uniquely balanced business model and strategic growth levers continue to deliver results and achieve our very simple purpose, which is to help the nation feel house proud. I'll take a few minutes to share how we are investing in these growth levers to continue to win in this market. Before I do that, I thought it would be helpful to look at some of the current consumer trends we are witnessing as we put our strategy into action. As you are aware, we keep a close eye on trends through our monthly Mood of the Nation survey.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Our local trade customers tell us they continue to be busy, with healthy pipelines of work and one in four of them telling us that they're booked up for a year in advance. For customers in the market for a new kitchen or bathroom, we are seeing that planned spend remains stable, although still below historical norms. It's worth noting that as people have been holding off buying a new kitchen or bathroom, they are getting older and simply more worn, so inevitably there is a backlog of volume building up. Turning to DIY, people still want to improve their homes and continue to prioritize DIY projects in the home and garden. As ever, speed and convenience are important to them. In our most recent survey, 60% are saying faster deliveries and that they are happy to pay more for the same-day service.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

We are particularly pleased that sales growth is volume-led, and this is all down to more customers coming through our doors or shopping online. In our retail business, the TradePro engine is truly motoring ahead, with sales up 10% and active membership, as Mark said, growing to 615,000. We are driving up DIY customer numbers through purposely broadening our appeal, attracting new customers by innovating in strategic categories and engaging communication. Our Proud of Peacock advertising campaign is working very well for us, and in case you haven't seen it yet, here's one of our latest TV ads.

From the big transformations to the small home improvements, feel as proud as a peacock with Wickes.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Now, we know that customers value choice, convenience, and speed, and with our digitally led service-enabled business model, it allows us to provide all of this quite seamlessly. We are achieving incredibly strong customer satisfaction scores, particularly in click & collect and home delivery, arguably those service touch points where the customer judges us most critically. We are continuously innovating in this space. In the first half, we have further enhanced our proposition to offer customers greater choice and even faster, more convenient service through a number of new initiatives. We have repositioned our assisted selling offer under the new name Wickes Extra, which offers customers who are shopping in-store easy access to our extended range online. We've launched a new 15-minute click & collect service, halving the time they can now order online and pick up from their nearby store.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

As we pick it quicker, customers are collecting it quicker, so we know they value it and it works. I'm delighted to share with you an exciting industry-leading service that we're launching called Wickes Rapid. In a nutshell, it means that customers will be able to receive a same-day home delivery of products weighing up to 800 kilos in under three hours. No one in the market is offering this. With a specialist partner on board, we can now deliver to your door or site within three hours, seven days a week. There are over 10,000 SKUs available and a delivery cost from just £9. As you can imagine, for a local trader, this is a game changer, giving them the ability to make bulk orders at speed so they can just get the job done. We've launched this in the last two weeks following a very successful customer trial.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

The result of all of the above, a clear strategy of proven growth levers executed brilliantly, is delivering record levels of market share. As you can see from this chart, particularly impressive growth in the past year as more customers choose to shop with Wickes. Now, turning now to our design & installation side of the business, we are very pleased that the transformational actions we took as we exited last year and into this are bearing real fruit and translating into growth in ordered and delivered sales. A quick reminder of what those actions were. In response to customer feedback, we simplified the customer journey and now present a unified Wickes kitchen offering with our bespoke and lifestyle ranges presented together across all marketing assets, brochures, the website, advertising, and promotions.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

We also simplified the start of the customer journey by developing new tech that puts the customer in control of that all-important first design consultant meeting. Customers can now book either online or in-store directly into an individual design consultant's diary by store nationwide. We've increased the availability of our design consultants, making it easier for customers to find a time that truly suits them to start the imagining of a new kitchen or bathroom. Think OpenTable for design consultants. Our field service management tool provides a technical solution for scheduling installers to make the overall experience as seamless as possible. We've launched a number of strategic initiatives for 2025 and are innovating across all levels of spend and choice.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

At the more value-led end, we've added eight new colorways to our lifestyle kitchens, whilst at the higher end we'll be launching paint to order in October and have introduced branded kitchen appliances like Smeg. All of this will be available to customers via a fabulous new design software program that we'll be rolling out in the second half and will transform the way a customer can visualize and design their dream kitchen and bathroom. In our solar business, leads now generated through Wickes channels account for more than 80% of the total Wickes solar installations. I thought I'd take this opportunity just to show you how great our kitchens and bathrooms look. It's all about innovating with color and style, and here are a couple of great examples. From the more traditional style bathroom on the left to our more contemporary styles, which reflect customer preference for pastel colors.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

That trend for pastel colors is also reflected in our kitchen designs, as you can see here with this Ohio lifestyle kitchen in pink. You'll be able to see these and more kitchens and bathrooms and hear all about our exciting plans for our design installations business at our Capital Markets event on the 14th of October in our Staines store. Get that in the diary. Now, given the vital role that tech plays to underpin the initiatives I've spoken about so far, I wanted to highlight some of the key investments we are making along with the benefits they bring. Back in 2021, when we demerged the business, we said we were going to put increasing investment into our tech platforms and services.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

We knew we had to address the legacy systems that needed upgrading, and we also had a clear vision to improve the customer experience through tech and digital advancements. In line with our plan, we are increasing our investment in this area and building a compelling track record of both enhancing the customer experience and improving productivity and efficiency through our tech investment. I've already talked about the ongoing drivers of growth listed here on this slide, so I don't propose to go over these again, but I will tell you about some of the strategic tech initiatives coming down the track in the coming months and years. The new design software tool will be a game changer for our D&I customers when we launch it for the winter sale.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

It will transform the customer journey by unlocking new capabilities to provide seamless inspiration and design experience, and it will also deliver cost-saving benefits, helping reduce any potential errors that can sometimes occur between measurement and installation. In the second half of 2026, we will roll out our new till systems and store inventory management into a unified commerce platform, thereby giving customers a more seamless shopping experience and our store teams the ability to truly digitize the store operation. Last but not least, we'll be implementing a new order management system to simplify our ordering and fulfillment capabilities and improve customer order accuracy. That's going to happen in two phases, the first taking place in the first half of 2026, followed up by the second in 2027. As you can see, there is a solid plan of investment and activity going into advancing our technological capabilities this year.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Turning now to investment in our store estates, in the first half, we have refitted or refreshed four stores, and now 82% of the estate is in the new format. We opened one new store at Leeds Moore Allison, a former Homebase store, and since the period end, we've opened new stores in a further two Homebase locations, Bury St Edmunds and Dunfermline in Scotland. Our property plans for the second half are on track with a total of 10 to 15 refits and five to seven new stores for the year, which does include those four Homebase stores. To give you an idea of what an ex-home-based store transformed into a brand new Wickes store looks like, here's a short video. Now, as you will know, our built-to-last responsible business strategy is incredibly important to us and embedded deeply within our business.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

In the first half, we had a number of highlights, including being ranked as the UK's number one retailer in the Financial Times Europe's Best Employer survey. Our community program continues to support local charities and community groups up and down the country, with over 1,200 projects benefiting from free Wickes products and volunteer support already this year. We have a new charity partner, CALM, which is a suicide prevention charity, and we're committed to raising £2 million for them over the next two years. We're already well on our way to hitting that target. In our homes pillar, which is focused on helping customers use less energy and reduce their carbon footprint, we have now trained 100 of our design consultants to be able to offer Wickes solar in-store and in the home.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

This is proving popular in a market where customers particularly value face-to-face advice, and it's a unique differentiator for us as no other national retailer or solar installation business is offering this service. To conclude, we've had a strong first half, growing sales, profits, and delivering record market share in what continues to be a challenging market, really demonstrating the customer appeal and distinctiveness of our business model. Whilst we are at record levels of market share, there is still so much more to go for. We are still just 6% of the £27 billion UK home improvement market, so we see tremendous headroom for growth, and that's not including the potential opportunity in the emerging and fast-growing home energy solutions market.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Our strong cash flow means we're able to invest in our proven growth levers, deliver further growth and market outperformance, and most critically, to continue to deliver attractive returns to shareholders through our dividend and share buyback program. Thank you for listening. Mark and I are now very happy to take any questions you have. Anna's in charge.

[Kate Calvert, Equity Analyst - Head of Retail/Consumer Research at Investec Group]

Morning everyone, Kate Calvert from Investec Bank (UK) Plc, two from me. First on to design & installation. What have you seen in terms of leads over the last couple of months? Is there any change in sort of conversion from the design consultation to ordering? The second question is on the step up in IT of £10 million through the P&L. Should we expect any other sort of step ups going forward, or is that now sort of in the base?

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I'll do the first, you do the second. Okay. In response to the design & installation question, as I sort of touched on there, I mean some of the benefits of the investment in tech, particularly giving the customer the ability on their terms to access a design consultant really swiftly and seamlessly, is really helping continue to grow leads. We are still seeing leads in growth in our business. As those leads come into the journey, likewise, we're seeing conversion in growth as well. The underpin for our design & installation business is we are growing this business through volume, which is great to see, and the volume is there because we've got more customers coming in and we're converting more of them.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

On IT, just taking us back to where we were a couple of years ago when we did our capital allocation update and we talked about the IT and the move to SaaS accounting and everything, we did talk at that point about increasing our overall spend on CapEx and SaaS and IT from around £15 million a year to £25 million a year. We're close to that level now. Most of that is coming through in SaaS and therefore hitting the P&L.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

There will be another increase next year, probably low single-digit millions next year, and then it will feel like we're at the sort of run rate.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

What this isn't is a spike in investment that then is going to go down again. This is about getting to the right level of investment that we need for a business of our size that is digitally led.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

As we've seen, a lot of the initiatives that we've been investing in are at the heart of what some of our success has been, and we see that as a future as well.

[Kate Calvert, Equity Analyst - Head of Retail/Consumer Research at Investec Group]

Great, thanks so much.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Thank you, Kate.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Shane Carbury from Goodbody, just two from me. Just to follow up on that design & installation question, can you give us a bit of a sense of, you know, you've moved into the kind of lower price kitchen market as well. Just how much has that got to do with the pretty encouraging like-for-likes in Q2 and design & installation? Secondly, if you could just give us an update now on SolarFast, how the integration has gone and kind of just over a year on, how you think it's performing versus expectations?

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Sure. I'll do the first, you do the second.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

As I just touched on there, Shane, in the presentation, we're continuing to innovate across the offer in terms of design & installation in good, better, and best, with lifestyle and bespoke being how we sort of cluster those. Lifestyle is in growth, which is great to see. Interestingly, it's a faster growing bespoke business that is really helping drive the performance of our overall design & installation business. We're delighted to see that the bigger ticket and the higher average order value projects are in greater volume growth.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

On solar, I'm very pleased with the progress on solar. When we bought the business, what attracted to us was the very strong customer focus, operational execution, doing brilliant projects, and looking after customers really well. From a sales perspective, they relied on a lot of third-party dealers and salespeople to bring in their sales. What we have been doing is building on the great operational execution, but then adding Wickes as the key sales channel, which is going to be much stronger for us and much more differentiated in the long term. What we've not seen is a growth in total sales. What we're seeing is a switch away from the sales that were generated in third parties now to Wickes being the real engine. As David mentioned, we've trained 100 of our design consultants to be able to sell.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

This is a real differentiator because in the market, typically at the moment, the journey is very digital. You may speak to somebody on the phone. The opportunity to go in and talk to someone in person, either in the store or indeed have the design consultant come to your home and talk to you about solar, is a real differentiator for us. That's only just happened, so we're expecting that to really build over the coming months.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Yeah, I think it's fair to say we're organizing a proposition that will compete for the future. It's not about the last five months. It's about building a business of scale for five years out, is how we think about this.

[David Hughes, Equity Research Analyst at Shore Capital]

A couple from me, please. Firstly, in terms of categories, you talked about kind of expanding into or building in categories where you perhaps underserve. Are there any key ones that you're looking at where you think there's a big opportunity to grow Wickes's share? Secondly, on the store rollout program, not necessarily a specific number, but do you have a kind of rough idea of how much more white space there is for you, how much more kind of store rollout you think you can get after before you feel like you're at the right level of Wickes penetration? Thanks.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Yeah, so I take both of those, Mark. If I start with your last question and work back to categories. In terms of the property opportunity, we've always said, look, we're around about 230 odd stores at the moment. We can see a pathway to somewhere between 250 and 260 in terms of a network build with a broad cadence of sort of like at the moment of around about four to five a year. They will be in much larger towns or conurbations where we feel we're underrepresented, where we can build more of a network in those larger populous areas. That isn't to say in time though that there isn't more opportunity for the business as we get beyond that.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I think our phase one thinking, David, at the moment is let's have a marker in around that 250, 260, and as we move through, there may be more opportunity. We're definitely underrepresented in the UK. We have national coverage, but there's ample white space for our business. I think in the categories, it's really about some of the innovation we're putting into decoratings, the innovation in the product lines we're putting into garden, and so forth. I always cite and we're doing more of this as well. We're quite a generalist as a retailer, so we serve, particularly for our trade customer, our most strategically valuable customer, where we serve the general one man in a van. The opportunity for further category innovation is definitely having greater presence in the specialist area. How do we attract more specialist plumbers, more specialist electricians?

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

That's the glide path that we remain on. We're doing some good stuff in that area, but there's definitely more to go. We're really doubling down and innovating and appealing to a much broader audience, as you can see through the communication there. We're growing our DIY audience really quite successfully at the moment, and that is coming through younger shoppers, female shoppers consistently in recent years, and we continue on that focus and strategy.

[Benjamin Zoega, Vice President - Equity Research at Deutsche Bank]

Hi, morning. It's Ben from Deutsche Bank. I just wanted to ask about the gross margin drivers in the first half. Out of that 80 bps uplift, can you talk about the uplift from the retail sales that you've had, but also the category mix and credit as well?

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Yeah, I'm not going to break the 80 into exact numbers, but those are the three we mentioned. They all contributed part of that 80 bps increase. Just to explain a little bit more on the design & installation side, there were two of the elements. Consumer credit, which is something we subsidize for our customers, the cost of that has come down for two reasons. One is interest rates are coming down, so if we're offering interest-free credit, clearly that cost comes down to us a little bit. Plus, we've tweaked our offer a little bit. On the category mix of the sales growth we've had in design & installation, it's been stronger in kitchens than in bathrooms, and kitchens tend to be slightly higher margin.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

On the retail side, it's really about volume-driven growth, and that gives us good momentum, the ability to really drive good deals with suppliers, get support from them because they really want to back the winners and the retailers that are giving them growth. It's less about category mix on the retail side and more about volume benefits. Matthew's got a question at the front here.

[Matthew McEachran, Senior Research Analyst at Singer Capital Markets]

Thanks. Yeah, Matthew from Singer Capital Markets, it's actually a follow-up on the gross margin point as well. It's been a while since I recall such a decent sized margin uplift in the business. You've been through the moving parts. If we strip out the mix effect, do you think those levers, the other two levers, you've got further runway on that?

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I think the year as a whole will be less of an increase than the 79 bps that we had in the first half, partly because we annualized some of the effects that we've lost. This is not a sort of a change in strategy of trying to push up margin. The other thing that's really important to say is our price position remains very good. We don't have any inflation in the business. This is not a gross margin as a result of us increasing prices. Inflation has been 0.% something, either plus or minus every month of the year. This is about really trading volume hard, getting the best deals that we can, a little bit of category mix and the consumer credit. Please be reassured that the number one priority for us is to be absolutely in the right place on price.

[Matthew McEachran, Senior Research Analyst at Singer Capital Markets]

Great, thanks. The second question just on trade. You gave a really good investor event, I think probably about maybe a year ago, I can't remember the exact date. There were quite a few levers in there in terms of targeting certain groups, increasing average spend, actually retaining or reactivating some lost trade customers. Do you want to talk within the 10%, do you want to talk a little bit more about which parts of that strategy are really yielding some benefits, and whether or not you would see the momentum from some of those initiatives that you talked about as potentially increasing from here?

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Yeah, all aspects of that are in play, Matthew, and all aspects are working to greater or lesser degrees just because of the size of the pools you're fitting in terms of a pool of those that have lapsed versus those you need to reactivate. The primary driver, though, which is really important just to focus on, it is penetration of new customers. It is growth of new customers. This business is underpinned by more people coming over the door into Wickes. As I always say, what we don't see in Wickes, and we do track this, we don't see customers trading down within Wickes. We see customers trading in for the great value we provide. The cornerstone of that in the first instance is more than half a century with traders building the brilliant brand that is Wickes. It still needs two-thirds of our sales.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Value and service and things like Rapid and 15-minute click & collect and all of that good stuff are just together continuing to prove very sticky in terms of attracting customers to the business. Everything is in play without dissecting any further, I think. The interesting thing, though, on AOV, what do we see is at the moment, average order values, so the average basket for a trade customer remains quite stable. Penetration is critical to drive that volume growth, and that is where we're winning in this marketplace. They're still quite thoughtful and considered around the amount they're spending, as any one of us would be as we're shopping, whether we're shopping groceries or any other sort of services. We're thoughtful and a bit more considered.

[Matthew McEachran, Senior Research Analyst at Singer Capital Markets]

Great, thanks. The final question, just in terms of current headlines in the press, the employee rights bill is obviously getting a lot of attention at the moment. You're a good employer.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

The number one.

[Matthew McEachran, Senior Research Analyst at Singer Capital Markets]

Number one indeed, yes.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Just for the avoidance of doubt.

[Matthew McEachran, Senior Research Analyst at Singer Capital Markets]

I think from previous conversations we've had, you weren't expecting much in the way of incremental cost pressures as a result of the bill. Can you just remind us exactly if that's the case and why you think that's the case? That'd be very helpful.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Yeah, I think the main reason is because we're ahead of the curve on a lot of these things anyway, whether that's flexible working or any of the other initiatives. I think we have always looked at what is the right thing to do for our colleagues. We measure colleague engagement frequently, and we really have a focus on it. Actually, we're quite ahead on these things. There was nothing really new in terms of bringing in either new initiatives or costs for us.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I think we are one of the few retailers nationally that offers flexible working for our store leadership teams. You can work a four-day week as a store manager.

[Sam Cullen, Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Morning. Some come in from Bill, and I've got a few also. A couple, I guess, reminders on the kitchen ranges. Can you remind us how many you offer and the cadence of the refresh cycle? Maybe pointing out you've refreshed the ranges this year.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

There, Sam, cranky.

[Sam Cullen, Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Then the second one on the kind of catch-up, the one in four of your tradesmen have an order book over 12 months. Where would that have sat, say in 2019, pre-COVID, then during the peak of the trading boom, during immediately after COVID? Is that a normalized level, one in four, or is 40% more normalized?

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I'll take both of those, actually, Mark. From a kitchen range point of view, or as you know, in our business, curation of offer is quite critical. When we think about our broader retail business, I will get to the question, Sam, fear not. It's around 9,000 SKUs versus a market that could be anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 SKUs in a physical location. It's a highly curated range. We take the same approach with our kitchens and bathrooms business.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Broadly in our kitchens business, you're probably looking at around about 35 or so sort of range options. I'm really excited though, really excited as what sort of paint to order can do to very flexibly expand that, by the way, because we can then offer you access to so many more colors in a bespoke way. That's just another way of providing almost extension of choice in a really simple, agile way out there in the marketplace. It does follow our philosophy of curation. In terms of innovation, typically in any one year within those ranges, you're probably changing three to five. In terms of range counts, it's probably going to be somewhere around 10%. The great thing is we get this right.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

When you're going to make change in a business like ours and you're going to rip out showrooms and replace them with new products, it needs to be right, and they always overperform in terms of their contribution to sales. We're really thoughtful about the curation in the first instance. We're super thoughtful around the innovation as we bring it into the marketplace because we need to be disciplined with that investment in terms of making that change, and it works really well. We get a multiple uplift in terms of their range change count to sales performance within the business. Innovation works well. Part of your question I simply can't answer on the Mood of the Nation monthly reporting because we didn't start it in 2019. It's something we started slightly later than that. What I can say is it does remain very stable.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

That one in four around 12 months for our TradePro customers remains pretty stable and has done. It oscillates a little. It might be 27% are saying this, it might be 24%, but it tends to sort of converge around about one in four, and that's been stable for a number of years now.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

is important to add to that that we're not expecting that to go to 40, 50. Because a lot of the tradespeople that we have as customers don't want long pipelines. They're operating on their own. They enjoy working two, three months ahead. Some of them are what we call business builders, are planning ahead. They're thinking about taking on new people on their team, and they want to. That's why we always quote the people with three months or more and the people with 12 months or more, just different types of businesses.

[Sam Cullen, Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Thanks. The last one was on market share. You're at 6% now. If you get to 250 stores, and I think you've talked about a goal of £10 million revenue per store, is that where we should be thinking on a five, seven-year view, getting 10% of that market of the £27 billion?

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Gosh. I will have a view on that, but I'm going to be guided by my CFO because you know what's going to happen, don't you, Sam? I'm going to get very ambitious.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

You'll say three and he'll say something.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Would you like to take that one, Mark?

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I think very happy to give a number. The date will be more for further discussion, but absolutely we see the opportunity of £2.5 billion across 250 stores. As David says, we're also looking at how do we expand beyond that 250, 260 stores. We absolutely see the opportunity to do on average £10 million a store. We have some stores, of course, that are already doing that. The headroom for growth in each of trade, DIY, and design & installation is substantial, so it's very realistic to do that. The stores, of course, are the nucleus around where we base the sales, but a lot of the sales growth will be in online and the initiatives around faster click & collect, rapid delivery. That's opening up new either actual customers or customers' share of wallet.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Those emergency purchases, if you're a tradesperson on site and you need it now, now we can do that with Wickes Rapid, whereas perhaps before they might have done something else. I think the opportunities are there. The strategy is there. We've got the funds to invest in the tech that we need, and so the plans are pretty well laid out.

[Sam Cullen, Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Related to that, I guess that's where you're going in terms of specialist categories. If you do go deeper into plumbing or electrical, that won't be cannibalizing store space. It'll be virtual online. It'll be next-day delivery or click & collect.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

It's far easier as we do. When we're testing new categories, you put them into the Wickes Extra range in the first instance to see what works, and then we will think about how we bring them into the physical estate thereafter. That's exactly what we do. That's how we model it and work it. Your start point in that question is, look, this is a big market, £27 billion, £28 billion. We're £1.6 billion, 6% share. There's just so much more headroom for growth in this market.

[Analyst]

Morning there. Just a couple of technical ones and maybe a more general one. On the working capital, obviously there's a seasonal inflow in H1, but year on year it's up quite nicely too. Is there any reason to believe that the year-on-year uplift will unwind in the second half? I mean the stock looks in a very good position. Secondly, obviously the headwinds get a little bit more intense in terms of the cost in the second half of inflation, and the tech investment seems more H2 weighted. The productivity gains were obviously a little bit below the inflation, but I guess the question is what might you have up your sleeve to meet this sort of second half profit? I think you've got to be flat in order to make the guidance as you've suggested today or reiterated today. Just any sort of thoughts on those two points?

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Yeah, sure, I'll take both of those. First of all, on working capital, part of a big chunk of the year-on-year uplift in that normal seasonal swing is the growth in the order book in design & installation. We will be getting through that and delivering quite a lot of that in the second half, so that will normalize at least most of it, if not all of it. The trading in terms of the stock position, also as we get into more sort of normal levels of trading, I would expect the retail side of working capital to normalize. I think it would be reasonable to expect that to normalize to a large degree. The cost headwinds coming in in H2, they are stepping up. Our productivity plan will also add again.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

If you think about that profit bridge for the half year we just showed you and what that might look like at full year, I think that gap between the cost inflation bucket, which is a negative obviously, and the mitigation through productivity will be similar in terms of it'll be bigger, of course, but it'll be similar in proportion that we won't quite offset all of the cost inflation. We're doing a really good job on that, and the strong sales growth is obviously we're able to capitalize on most of that growth and overcome most of the operating cost increases with productivity. We're very happy with consensus despite all of that. Also, the increase in tech investment that we talked about. We said that in the year 2025, it will be about £10 million more than in 2024. That will be slightly back half-weighted as well.

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

With all of those things considered, there's quite a lot to come on the cost side, but we're comfortable that the performance of the top line is going to be strong enough to carry it.

[Analyst]

You're probably not going to do this, but if you could spell out, is there a minimum kind of top-level growth you need in order to bridge that?

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

There probably is in your model. You can backsolve for that. We're comfortable. We said that Q3 has started in line with our expectations. We're comfortable with how we're trading at the moment.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

The shape of that starting Q3 is what we've seen in the first half, which is this is volume-driven. There's no inflation in this. It's volume-driven, and we'll continue to benefit from the leverage of that.

[Analyst]

Finally, just a more general question. I mean that market share step up year on year, it's obviously very impressive. We kind of know the answer to it, but if you could just spell out where you think you're getting it and who's the fall guys, and anything you can elaborate on, that would be useful.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

I mean the trend in terms of where it's coming from remains reasonably stable, as we've discussed the answer to this question before, which is broadly across all aspects of the market, whether it's through other retailers or the more trade-centric merchant operations, particularly when you think of our TradePro growth in particular. We don't over or under steal from anyone. There's no over or under trades in terms of how we're switching those customers. It's quite a simple diagonal slice in the market. It is a question that we do ask because the benefit of bringing in so many 3,000 to 4,000 new TradePro customers every week is you could talk to a decent stack of customers and work out if you're shopping with me now, where are you shopping less? That's a standard question that we ask.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

We've got a good insight on where that switching is coming from, but it's just across the market at large. Basically, as I said, it's a large market. Always opportunity.

[Analyst]

Great, thanks.

[Grace Gilberg, Senior Associate at Jefferies]

Hi, Grace Gilbert from Jefferies. Just one question for me. This is around click & collect 15 minutes. Is that across all the stores in the estate now?

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

It is indeed, Grace. Yes. Our colleagues are working very hard. As I said in my presentation, what's really interesting is you innovate on the things that the customers are seeking. As we pick it quicker, the customers are actually picking it up even quicker as well. There's a lovely correlation there. That's why we know that the proposition is of value. The difference there is 15 minutes. We could be moving in some instances tons of plasterboard in under 15 minutes and getting it onto a back of a wagon. It's not like we're picking small things up from a remote, a close location. We're having to move some big stuff to deliver on that promise, and we are delivering it spectacularly. Our colleagues do an amazing job, and the customer satisfaction and feedback has been brilliant as well, so we're delighted.

[Grace Gilberg, Senior Associate at Jefferies]

Perfect. That answered my other question as well. Great.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Our customers like it. Was that your other question? Thank you, Grace.

[Executive]

Any more questions? Anything online, team?

[Mark George, CFO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

There are no webcast questions at the moment. I hand back for some closing remarks.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

Super. I'll finish where I started with a thank you. Thank you for coming along today, and I know it's been a little awkward to get into the city today, so we greatly appreciate it. Also, thank you for those listening on the webcast. Hopefully, you've got a sense this morning that we are really pleased with these results. It's been a super first half of the business. We remain very, very confident in our strategy that it will continue to deliver outperformance and growth for the business. I can't reemphasize enough that we are a six-share player in a large market. We almost ignore what happens at a market level. If you innovate and provide the greatest value on the things the customers value most, you will grow your business, and that is where our strategy is centered, and we will continue to grow this business.

[David Wood, CEO & Executive Director at Wickes Group]

It is a great business. It's got tremendous potential, and Mark and I look forward to coming back and sharing further progress at the year end. Thank you very much for listening.

Participants

Executives

• David Wood, CEO & Executive Director
• Mark George, CFO & Executive Director

Analysts

• Kate Calvert, Equity Analyst - Head of Retail/Consumer Research at Investec Group
• David Hughes, Equity Research Analyst at Shore Capital
• Benjamin Zoega, Vice President - Equity Research at Deutsche Bank
• Matthew McEachran, Senior Research Analyst at Singer Capital Markets
• Sam Cullen, Equity Research Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Analyst
• Grace Gilberg, Senior Associate at Jefferies
• Executive