Woodie's DIY owner bounces back from Covid-19 losses      

Grafton Group, which owns Woodie's DIY, repaid €2.5m to the Government after recovering from lockdown losses 

Grafton Group's chief executive Gavin Slark said Woodies DIY is "in good shape" despite local and national lockdowns. 

The threat of further national lockdows in Ireland and Britain was diminishing, but further local shutdowns could not be ruled out, according to the boss of Grafton Group, owner of the Chadwicks builders merchants and the Woodie’s DIY stores in the Republic.

Chief executive Gavin Slark said that local lockdowns in recent weeks had had little effect on its group operations, which include significant operations in Britain and the Netherlands, and that the pickup in sales since the end of the national lockdowns was substantial.

He said that he believed the possibility of further national lockdowns was more remote than they were, as governments were more likely to focus on local restrictions than on national lockdowns, if new restrictions were required by any new Covid-19 outbreaks.          

He was confident about the way Grafton businesses had so far weathered the Covid storm but the company was still wary of more national or local lockdowns.

In Ireland, the rebound of sales since the reopening of many parts of the economy was so marked that it had decided to repay the Government the €2.5m it had received under the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme, in relation to the Woodie’s stores.

Chadwicks, however, was hit much more severely, he said, and the group will take a view later this year on whether to repay the €5.4m it had received under the TWSS in relation to the merchanting business.

He said the wage-subsidy scheme had done its work in saving a substantial number of jobs.     

On an annual basis, Chadwicks accounts for around 70% of all the sales Grafton generates in the Republic.

Grafton Group say their Irish business is "in good shape" 

Mr Slark was speaking after reporting that Grafton had posted a 76% slump in pre-tax profits to £20.5m (€22.8m) for the six months to the end of June, on revenues of just over £1bn, down 29% from a year earlier.

However, investors hailed the rebound in activity in July and August and the London-listed shares climbed 4%. 

Grafton was once viewed as the company which was among the most vulnerable to the economic fallout from Covid-19, as well as from Brexit. 

In Ireland, the effect of the national lockdown was that Woodie’s was closed for 51 days “and that obviously is a completely different level of challenge than local restrictions”, Mr Slark said.

He said that the Irish business was in good shape and had managed its way through the crisis with six redundancies, while in the UK it had closed 15 branches because of the scale of the business there. 

Grafton had no plans to shed more jobs in Ireland or close more stores in the UK, he said.

The next milestone for Britain and Ireland was the return of the schools, which frees up parents to go back to work and for tradesmen to start work in vacated houses. That activity could lead to a boost in Grafton sales, he said.