Strong gains abroad

Preliminary figures from the company show that net group sales of Hornbach Holding AG in the recently completed 2007/2008 trading year (to 29 February 2008) grew by 2.9 per cent to € 2 617 mio. The Hornbach Baumarkt AG sub-group, which operates 125 DIY and garden stores in nine countries throughout Europe, notched up a 3.2 per cent sales increase to € 2 469 mio. Hornbach is talking about a division in the sales trend between home and abroad. Thanks to developments in other countries of Europe (11.6 per cent up) it was possible to compensate for the sales decline at home (minus 1.5 per cent to € 1 507 mio). Around 61 per cent of the sales (previous year 64 per cent) of Hornbach Baumarkt AG stemmed from the domestic DIY and garden stores.