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.
"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.
