Howden Joinery Grp Ord (HWDJF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

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Replay transcript excerpt

WEBVTT 00:00:00.537 -- 00:00:05.662 Good morning and welcome to Haydn's 2024 results 00:00:05.662 -- 00:00:07.662 presentation. 00:00:07.964 -- 00:00:11.448 I will start by introducing our performance for the year. 00:00:11.448 -- 00:00:16.252 Paul Hayes will then review our financial results for the period. 00:00:16.252 -- 00:00:20.116 I will then share my perspective on our performance and outline our plans for this year 00:00:20.116 -- 00:00:23.618 and then we'll look forward to taking your questions. 00:00:23.960 -- 00:00:29.697 The business performed well in, as we anticipated, a challenging marketplace. 00:00:29.697 -- 00:00:34.284 The results met our expectations as we continued with our investment programme, which 00:00:34.284 -- 00:00:37.248 is focused on our key capabilities, 00:00:37.248 -- 00:00:40.754 which gives us end-to-end a stronger business. 00:00:40.754 -- 00:00:47.120 Group sales were ahead of those in 2023 and were 47% up on 2019, 00:00:47.143 -- 00:00:51.249 being the year prior to the onset of the COVID. 00:00:51.249 -- 00:00:55.956 In the UK, we believe we gained market share, which helped us mitigate a significant 00:00:55.956 -- 00:01:00.224 single-digit decline in the overall size of the kitchen market. 00:01:00.224 -- 00:01:05.090 Entry-level kitchens represented a higher proportion of the kitchens we sold with sales 00:01:05.090 -- 00:01:09.376 of product in our kitchen categories collectively outperforming those of other established 00:01:09.376 -- 00:01:11.298 categories. 00:01:11.298 -- 00:01:16.145 We maintained an industry-leading gross margin with gross profit ahead of last year. 00:01:16.145 -- 00:01:21.392 We balanced recovery of cost rises with our commitment to providing competitive pricing 00:01:21.392 -- 00:01:24.573 across t...