Remarkable profit growth

Kingfisher has announced the figures for the first half of the group’s 2009/10 financial year. These reveal a sales rise of 1.4 per cent to £ 5.5 bn, which contrasts with a figure of minus 2.1 per cent in like-for-like terms. However, the group succeeded in increasing pre-tax profit by 34.6 per cent to £ 288 mio. Like-for-like sales in Britain and Ireland were 0.3 per cent below last year’s figure. B&Q saw especially positive development with a 1.4 per cent like-for-like sales increase. In France like-for-like sales went down 3.5 per cent. In the other countries abroad (Poland, China, Spain, Russia and Turkey) sales went down in like-for-like terms by an average of 3.5 per cent. Sales in Poland made positive progress (+2.1 per cent), as they did in Russia (+3.1 per cent). By contrast, negative figures were reported from China (-17.7 per cent) and Turkey (-3.9 per cent).