Good start to the new business year

According to information from the company itself, the Hornbach Group has made a good start to the 2006/2007 business year. In the first quarter the sub-group, Hornbach-Baumarkt-AG, which operates 122 DIY and garden stores in eight countries of Europe (90 of them in Germany), recorded net sales up by 6.9 per cent to € 659.4 mio. The share of sales contributed by the international stores rose by more than one percentage point over the same period last year to 35.5 per cent. Like-for-like sales (without taking into account new openings) improved by 1.4 per cent throughout the group and by 6.6 per cent abroad.
The Hornbach Group expects a sales increase around the middle of the single-digit percentage area for the business year as a whole. The profits are expected to show disproportionate growth by comparison. Following the closure of two former Lafiora garden centres on 31 May 2006, the company says that the network of branches will comprise 122 outlets altogether at the end of the 2006/2007 business year (previous year: 124). One new store is currently under construction, and three branches are being extended in accordance with the latest prototype with a building materials drive-in. Up to ten new DIY and garden stores are to be inaugurated during the coming business year, two of them in Germany. Then seven store openings per year on average are scheduled for the next five years. Far more than half of these are to be built abroad. The plans include market entry in Romania in the summer of 2007.