Halfords, the UK's leading retailer of motoring, cycling and leisure products, has released its full year results:

- Revenue up 7.9% and like-for-like sales grew by 5.0%

- Underlying profit before tax down 18.3% to £36.1 million

- Continued soft trading conditions since year-end meaning the group remains cautious for FY25

Charlie Huggins, Manager of the Quality Shares Portfolio at Wealth Club, commented:

"Growth not only stalled for Halfords in 2024, but went into reverse, with low consumer confidence hitting demand for bikes, tyres and other big ticket items. Combined with rising costs, it meant profit fell by almost a fifth.

Unfortunately, the outlook for 2025 doesn't look much better. Halfords has continued to see caution from its customers, and inflation remains a problem, with both freight and wages rising strongly.

Consumer confidence is clearly being impacted by cost of living pressures. But this isn't the full story. The post-pandemic cycling boom is unwinding. In addition, competition is fierce and increased promotional activity, especially in cycling, has clearly hit Halfords hard and put pressure on margins.

Overall, Halfords is in a tough spot. It is rightly focusing on what it can control - like cutting costs. But unfortunately, there is a lot that is out of its hands. With consumers still feeling the pinch and on-going inflationary pressures, 2025 is shaping up to be another difficult year."

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For further information contact:

Jo Thorne: 07939882816, jo.thorne@wealthclub.co.uk

Wealth Club

The aim of Wealth Club is simple. To provide high net worth individuals and sophisticated investors with clear, impartial and well researched information on investment opportunities not typically available through mainstream stockbrokers or financial advisers. Wealth Club was set up in February 2016 and is now the largest non-advisory broker of tax efficient investments such as VCTs, EIS and Inheritance Tax Portfolios. Since launch 11,500 clients have invested more than £1.375 billion through its platform. Wealth Club targets commercially compelling, high potential and high growth companies to back. In 2023, over 40% of Wealth Club's direct investments in private companies were oversubscribed.

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