Shares in home improvement giant Kingfisher have risen in early trading as the group reports that like-for-likes rose 3.5% in the second quarter, helped by strong performance at B&Q and Screwfix.
The FTSE 100 firm saw its stock rise by 1%, or 4.6p to 371.6p, by 9:25am on Thursday.
In the UK and Ireland it announced that sales jumped by 5.5% in the 10 weeks to 11 July, well ahead of the 1.6% rise achieved during the first three months of the year.
Elsewhere sales in its French business improved markedly, with numbers up by 1.3%, compared to 1.2% drop in the first quarter.
In a statement, Véronique Laury, Kingfisher’s chief executive officer, said: “We have delivered a solid Q2 sales performance to date across all our major businesses, albeit against softer comparatives than in Q1. I am also very pleased to report that the pilot of our unified IT system, which is a key enabler of our ‘ONE’ Kingfisher plan, started on time in Ireland.
“We look forward to updating on further progress against our first ‘sharp’ decisions in September. And we have to date returned £138m to shareholders via a share buy back since the year end.”
Earlier in 2015, the group confirmed it will shut around 60 B&Q stores in the UK and Ireland over the coming two years, although it also said it would open around the same amount of Screwfix shops.
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