LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - B&M European Value Retail reported a rise in sales in the first eight weeks of the new fiscal year as locked-down Britons took advantage of the sunny weather to do home repairs and gardening during the coronavirus crisis.
Like-for-like sales rose 22.7% in the period, while the company also reported a strong end to fourth quarter sales as customers packed into stores during the wave of panic buying in March to stockpile groceries, driving a 6.6% rise.

The retailer said the strong DIY and gardening performance offset "a significant fall in customer count" during the period, as customers stayed at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

"The B&M UK business is experiencing higher than normal operating costs in distribution and at stores resulting from the application of social distancing measures put in place to protect our customers and colleagues, as well as the payment of premium wage rates during the Covid-19 peak period," the company said on Friday.

Chief executive Simon Arora said the company had encountered "exceptionally strong demand in our UK business over recent weeks".

"Customers have been coming to our stores much less frequently through the lockdown but their average spend has been much higher than normal."

"We have seen a significant bring-forward of demand in some key categories and the remarkably warm Spring weather in the UK has been a major factor behind this during recent weeks. We are not expecting this current level of trading to continue as normal shopping patterns resume."

However, he warned that there was still "considerable uncertainty" on how hard the pandemic would hit the economy, making it hard to predict future trading levels.

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