Halfords Group plc (HLFDF) Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Welcome to the Halford Group results for the 53 weeks ending the 3rd of April 2026. I'm Henry Birch, the Chief Executive of Halfords and joining me today is Jo Hartley, our Chief Financial Officer. In terms of today's presentation, I wanted to start with some initial reflections on the year. We'll then take you through progress on our strategy and Joe will take you through the detail of our financial results, I'll then give you an overview of current trading and our outlook, and we'll close today's session with the opportunity for Q&A. So starting with some reflections on FY26, I'm really pleased to be announcing a very strong set of results. We've delivered strong like-for-like sales growth at 4.8%, We've grown our gross margin rate to its highest level in a decade at 52.8%. Our underlying PBT performance is at the top end of consensus forecasts and we've delivered another impressive cash flow performance with strong free cash flow, net cash on our balance sheet and an increase in our dividend. We've also seen the momentum of FY26 carry over into the current year with strong trading in April, May and June resulting in us guiding to the top end of analyst consensus for FY27. If we look at the wider context, FY26 was a year in which we refocused the business and reset our agenda for the years ahead. We've made a number of key hires into our leadership team. I joined the business about 14 months ago. Adam Pay joined as managing director of garages. Jess Frame joined as our managing director of retail. And more recently, Sarah Haywood joined as our CIO. In November, we laid out a strategic framework with three sequential phases of optimize, evolve, and Scale. And while it's early days we have made great progress in the optimised phase of our plan so far with a laser foc...