DE4CC0DE-5FC3-4494-BCBF-4D50B00366B5

Britain's B&M Plans 50 More Stores As Profit Rises

By Dayeeta Das
Share this article
Britain's B&M Plans 50 More Stores As Profit Rises

Fast-growing British discounter B&M European Value Retail reported an 8.7% rise in 2018-19 profit and said it plans to open another 50 stores in its new financial year.

The company trades from around 620 B&M branded stores and 281 stores under the Heron Foods and B&M Express brands in Britain as well as the Jawoll chain in Germany and Babou brand in France.

B&M, a general goods retailer which sells everything from furniture to electricals to food, said on Thursday it made a pretax profit of £249.4 million (€283 million) in the year to 30 March, on revenue up 17.1% to £3.49 billion (€3.96 billion).

New Store Opportunities

In contrast to a host of UK retailers who are closing stores, due to rising costs and the shift to internet sales, the group opened a net 44 new B&M fascia stores during the year and plans at least a further 50 new openings in 2019-20. It said it was benefiting from plentiful availability of new store opportunities.

B&M said it had made a 'pleasing' start to its new financial year with first quarter like-for-like sales up 'mid-single digit' in B&M UK fascia stores.

ADVERTISEMENT

"We just achieved our best ever Easter trading season, with healthy positive like-for-likes, but it would be prudent to expect more moderate like-for-like growth in the full year as a whole," said chief executive Simon Arora.

Shares in B&M, up 35% so far this year, were down 0.2% in early trading on Thursday, valuing the business at £3.82 billion (€4.33 billion).

News by Reuters, edited by ESM. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: European Supermarket Magazine.

Get the week's top grocery retail news

The most important stories from European grocery retail direct to your inbox every Thursday

Processing your request...

Thanks! please check your email to confirm your subscription.

By signing up you are agreeing to our terms & conditions and privacy policy. You can unsubscribe at any time.