Howden Joinery Grp Ord (HWDJF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Welcome to the Haydn's 2024 interim results presentation. I'll begin by introducing our performance for the first half. Paul Hayes will then review our financial results for the period and then share my perspectives on our 2024 performance to date and our plans for the remainder of the year. And then we'll take your questions. The group delivered an encouraging first half performance in, as we anticipated, a challenging marketplace. The results met our expectations for the period and we are on track for 2024. We continued with our investment program, which is focused on our key capabilities and which gives us end-to-end a stronger business. Group sales in the first half, which included an extra week's trading in January, were 4.3% ahead of those in 2023 and were 48% up on 2019, being the year prior to the onset of the pandemic. In the UK, we believe we gained kitchen market share, which helped us mitigate a decline in the overall size of the kitchen market. Entry-level kitchens represented a higher proportion of the kitchens we sold with sales of product in our kitchen categories increasing at a higher rate than in our joinery categories. We maintained an industry-leading gross margin with gross profit ahead of last year as we balanced recovery of cost rises with our commitment to providing competitive pricing across the board for our customers. Reported first half profit was in line with last year's and 44% up on 2019. Excluding net spend on strategic investments above last year's level, first half profit increased at a similar rate to sales. Our builders remained busy and we made good progress in our strategic initiatives for the UK and total sales of our international operations increased. The business delivered strong operating cash flow and we maintained a robus...