Travis sales drop as consumers steer away from big ticket items

The plumbing, builders merchant and DIY group said like-for-like sales overall rose by 5.9 per cent in the nine months to September 30, compared with a 7.2 per cent rise in the first six months.

Wickes, the 200-store DIY chain, has been hit hardest with same store sales down by 2 per cent in the last 13 weeks.

The problems in the sector have seen two rivals, Focus DIY and Moben, go under during the year.

Wickes bought 13 stores from Focus, which it says have now been fully integrated but added that weakening consumer confidence continues to hit major purchases.

Kitchen and bathroom sales at Wickes have fallen by 12.4 per cent over the last nine months while sales of other core product lines rose by 2.7 per cent.

Wickes’ like-for-like sales over the nine months fell by 0.5 per cent with sales overall up by 1.2 per cent.

The Northampton-based firm added that Travis and plumbing business BSS were offsetting the weakness in consumer spend- ing.

Merchanting’s like-for-like sales rose by 7.7 per cent in the latest three months and were up by 9.6 per ent over the year so far.

Chief executive Geoff Cooper said Wickes and Travis had won bigger shares of their respective markets.

The group opened a further 32 branches in the quarter and after the sale of 29 Buck and Hickman branded outlets at the end of the quarter now has about 1,810 in total.

BSS, which Travis acquired for £558m last year, increased like-for-like sales by 2.6 per cent in the three months to Septem- ber.

While Wickes has been promoting heavily with the “it’s got our name on it” tag line, Mr Cooper said group profit margins over the past three months were in line with the first half.

BSS and Wickes were both slightly ahead of last year, he added. Shares rose by 3 per cent on the update.

Kevin Lapwood, an analyst at broker Seymour Pierce, said Travis is “holding up remarkably well” and is “clearly taking market share,” and while he added this must be at the expense of some margin he expects the overall impact to be small.

Seymour Pierce expects underlying profits this year of £292m, at the top end of market fore- casts.