Euro and winter push profit Kingfisher down by 12%

Sales drop as well

Globally Kingfisher, the company above brands
such as B&Q, Castorama, Brico Dépôt and Screwfix, saw its sales drop to
10.573 billion pound (12.4 billion euro), 2.4% less than for the
financial year 2011/2012.

The drop is mainly due to disappointing sales
in the United Kingdom and Ireland, caused by low consumer trust and extremely
bad weather conditions. Sales dropped by 2% to 4.3 billion pound (5 billion
euro). Especially B&Q struggled and had to take a hit of -3.6% in sales. The
company also suffered from the bad weather: seasonal sales were 11% lower than
in the previous year.

In Ireland things went completely awry: Kingfisher
had to request protection from creditors in January for its nine locations of
B&Q Ireland. The recession in the Irish Republic made sales of the company plummet.
Kingfisher has already set 21 million pound (247 million euro) aside to handle
its Irish business.

Euro and zloty also weigh on numbers

For Europe the exchange rates of the euro and the
Polish zloty also were a spoilsport: fifty million less profit was made because
of them.

The biggest disappointment was France, where
sales dropped by 6.2% to 4.192 billion pound (4.9 billion euro). The rise of 2%
at Castorama picked up the slack of Brico Dépôt, which suffered big because of
the slowing construction market, but the weakening of the euro nullified the
rise of 0.3% at constant exchange rates completely.