Results round-up

B&Q and Screwfix owner Kingfisher nailed an encouraging increase in first half profits and confirmed early progress in chief executive Véronique Laury's ambitious turnaround project.

On adjusted sales that rose 6.8% at the reported level to £5.75bn, or 3.3% on a like-for-like (LFL) basis on constant currencies, underlying pre-tax profits grew 13.5% to £436m.

This was roughly 1.5% ahead of consensus expectations of £430m, with performance driven by strong trading in the Poland and the UK, especially at Screwfix, and a return to profit growth in France.

Laury said it was a "good 'business as usual' result" in terms of sales and profits, and that while the EU referendum has created an uncertain economic outlook in the UK, "there has been no clear evidence of an impact on demand so far on our businesses", though for France she remains cautious on the short term outlook.

"Looking longer term, we are starting to build solid foundations to enable us to deliver our five year transformation, which is our key growth driver. We are making good progress on our strategic milestones for this first year and we are on track. The level of transformation activity will increase significantly, however given the expertise and energy of our colleagues we continue to feel confident about the challenges ahead."

Progress on Laury's £800m, five-year 'One Kingfisher' plan included a new unified store IT platform in B&Q, the launch of a new single group supply chain in June, followed immediately by the roll-out of the first product ranges that are unified across all the group's chains, and the completion of 80% of the planned B&Q store closures.

For the six months to 31 July, while total sales at B&Q declined 2% due to store closures the 24% growth at Screwfix meant the UK & Ireland enjoyed growth of 3.1% at constant currencies, or 6.7% on a LFL basis, while retail profits were up 8.8%.

Fresh from being added to the FTSE 250 on Monday, online gaming and gambling group GVC Holdings said it was confident of achieving a result at the upper end of market expectations for 2016 after a strong first half result.

Having completed the acquisition of larger rival Bwin.Party in February, GVC more than doubled adjusted pre-tax profit to €51.3m in the first six months of the year and said organic growth opportunities from the acquisition were greater than it had initially expected but would need to be extracted through increased marketing investment.

Integration of Bwin was said to be on target to secure €125m of annualised synergies by the end of 2017.

On the back of a 4% rise in pro forma sports wagers and 8% in net gaming revenue, pro forma revenue was lifted 8% to €432m, or 12% at constant currencies, with actual revenues more than doubled to €382.1m from €120m last year.

Adjusted basic earnings per share were down to €0.198 from €0.332 in 2015 due to the €1.2bn of stock issued as part of the takeover.

Since Bwin has been added GVC has increased its sports margin to 10.0% from the 7.7% for the same period in 2015, helped in part by favourable sports results have been a factor, while cross-selling has seen gaming revenues from bwin sports labels increase 27% thanks to the addition of more casino products and improved marketing.

The enlarged group also secured its largest B2B service agreement yet, with bookmaker Betfred, though the benefits are unlikely to be realised until late 2017 and beyond.

Third quarter trading was said to have started "positively", helped by a strong end to the Euro 2016 football tournament, with average daily net revenue for the 11 weeks up to 15 September 12% higher on a pro forma basis and 15% in constant currency.

An experienced new head of bingo has been appointed as part of the board's aim of stepping up the bingo business as well as extending the Foxy brand into an improved Foxy Casino offer.

Chief executive Kenneth Alexander said: "The group operates in a highly competitive, increasingly regulated and taxed environment, GVC has never been better placed to face these challenges.

"Indeed, we believe the organic growth potential of the Group is now greater than originally anticipated at the time of the bwin.party transaction acquisition."