Wickes Group plc (WIX) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and thank you for taking the time to join us today. And I'd also like to welcome everyone who is watching via the webcast. I'm here with our CFO, Mark George, and we are delighted to share with you our results for the six months to the end of June. We'll spend the next 20 minutes or so taking you through the performance of the business and the broader market trends, as well as highlighting the great progress we are making on executing our strategic plans. I am pleased to report we delivered a resilient performance in the first half and made record market share gains in our retail business, which comprises of local trade and DIY. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of my 8,000 colleagues for their incredible work in delivering these results and helping the nation feel House Proud. In a challenging market, our outperformance is a clear demonstration that our uniquely balanced business model and strategic growth levers continue to deliver and position us well looking forwards. We continue to see great success with our TradePro scheme with sales up 14% and this week we're celebrating hitting our target of 1 million members. In our design and installation business, we're encouraged by the success of our lifestyle kitchens performance with sales up 19% in the half. And of course, we've added a new arm to our design and installation business. The recent acquisition of Solarfast gives us an opportunity to build market leadership in the rapidly growing home energy solutions market. And in the half, we've begun our initial rollout of Wix Solar in 50 trial stores and online. Our new store refit programme is progressing well and we're delivering returns and we've opened two new stores and undertaken three refits in the first half with more to come before ...