Revenues up slightly, but challenges remain at Halfords

Halfords, the UK's leading retailer of motoring, cycling and leisure products, has released its third quarter results, and while Group revenues grew 1.6 per cent, and two per cent like-for-like during the quarter, stronger sales in motoring and needs-based categories were partly off-set by weaker discretionary spending.

October and November sales were strong, but sales in December were much weaker, driven by a combination of mild and wet weather impacting demand for winter products and footfall into stores, and customers balancing difficult spending decisions in the lead up to Christmas, the company said.

The Group said that continues to deliver revenue growth in a very challenging consumer environment, highlighting the benefit of its strategic shift to needs-based, service-related revenues, focussed on motoring. It said that the cycling and consumer ryres market are performing significantly worse than anticipated and have weakened in Q3. 

Graham Stapleton, Chief Executive Officer, said: “In what remains a very challenging time for our customers, we are pleased to have delivered a resilient performance in Q3. Against the current backdrop, our continued strategic shift towards needs-based and motoring service-related revenues has never been more relevant. However, we are still seeing drivers delay essential maintenance and there is a worrying increase in potentially unsafe vehicles on the road.  Recent TyreSafe data estimates that one-in-four tyres on Britain’s roads could be illegal, equating to just over 10 million tyres.

"We are continuing to grow share across all of our markets and are confident that the business is very well-placed to drive significant profit growth once those markets recover. Trading in Q4 has begun strongly and we remain focused on everything that we can control, with a number of initiatives underway to achieve further efficiencies within the business, as well as investing in areas where we see real opportunities for future growth.”