Halfords Group plc (HLFDF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Halfords Group preliminary results for the 52 weeks ending the 29th of March 2024. I'm Graham Stapleton and joining me today is Joe Hartley, our CFO. In terms of the agenda for today's presentation, Joe will start with a review of our FY24 financial performance. I will then give you an overview of the business performance and the strategic progress we delivered last year. I will then cover the outlook for the year ahead and we will close today's session with the opportunity for you to ask some questions. Before I hand you over to Joe to talk you through our results, I wanted to give you a few headlines on our overall performance for FY24. There is no doubt that FY24 was another very tough year. Business performance was impacted by unexpected continuing declines in the consumer tyres and cycling markets, and by softer than expected consumer demand for big ticket purchases. At the same time, elevated cost inflation was even higher than we expected. Despite that, we delivered strong revenue growth and we made good strategic progress, successfully delivering against those areas within our control. To pick out just a few of the highlights, we made share gains across all four of our core markets. We beat our cost reduction target, delivering more than 35 million of savings in the year. And we made significant progress in both of our strategically important areas of services and B2B, with our service-related sales exceeding half of our revenue for the first time. This progress has delivered a stronger platform that positions the business well for future growth. I'll now hand you over to Joe to talk you through our financial results in more detail. Joe. Thank you, Graham, and good morning, everyone. Before I start, the usual reminder ...