Halfords reports continuing sales growth

Car parts and cycle retailer Halfords, which trades in Ireland and the UK, reported its seventeenth consecutive year of sales growth today and said shoppers were still spending more in its stores.

Halfords said like-for-like sales since the start of April were higher than 12 months ago after stripping out the impact of an earlier Easter this year, but did not give specific figures.

The news – coupled with a 76.9% hike in annual profits to £77.5m (€116m) – will reassure investors in a week when the British Retail Consortium warned of a consumer-led recession.

Halfords said it had the “ability to defend itself against cyclical economic change” as store revamps and demand for in-car entertainment and satellite navigation systems kept its sales growth story going.

Halfords, which has 398 stores and 9,940 staff, has benefited from prices of satellite navigation systems coming down from more than £1,000 (€1,500) to about £300 (€448).

Demand for the high-tech products has grown substantially as a result, while Halfords said drivers were upgrading their in-car audio systems to make them compatible with MP3 players.

Like-for-like sales across the group rose 8.9% during the year to April 1, with growth across its four product areas of car maintenance, car accessories, cycling and travel goods.

Total revenues improved by 8.6% to £628.4m (€938m) as the group installed close to one million products during the year, ranging from car parts to child seats and DVD players under its “We’ll Fit It” programme.

Halfords has been introducing a new “supermezzanine” format which adds about 40% of trading space to a standard superstore and has enabled it to stock new products for children and more leisure ranges.

By the end of March, a total of 57 stores had been redesigned and Halfords said it would convert 35 more this year as the format had so far generated “significant uplifts” in like-for-like sales.

Chief executive Ian McLeod said current trading gave the group confidence that its strategy would “deliver positive results going forward, despite a challenging retail environment”.

Halfords is the UK’s leading retailer by turnover in the sale of car maintenance products, car accessories, cycling products and travel goods, operating in a market worth an estimated £3bn (€4.5bn).

It floated on the London Stock Exchange in June last year and Mr McLeod, a former chief executive of Celtic football club, took over as chief executive in March after predecessor David Hamid retired due to ill health.