HORNBACH Baumarkt AG: Substantial sales and earnings growth in first quarter of 2020/21- Operating earnings grow by around 90 percent

Substantial sales and earnings growth in first quarter of 2020/21:
Operating earnings grow by around 90 percent

Bornheim bei Landau, June 9, 2020.
The Hornbach Baumarkt AG Group can report a jump in its sales and earnings for the first quarter (March 1 to May 31, 2020) of the 2020/21 financial year compared with the previous year’s quarter.

Based on initial preliminary figures, consolidated sales in the opening quarter increased by 18.4% to Euro 1,492 million (2019/20: Euro 1,260.7 million). Consolidated adjusted EBIT (operating earnings excluding non-operating earnings items*) rose by some 90% to around Euro 160 million (2019/20: Euro 84.1 million).

The substantial improvement in earnings was essentially driven by strong sales growth in Germany and abroad. In the course of the coronavirus crisis, demand from customers in the stationary and online business has risen notably since mid-March, also benefiting from favorable spring weather in 2020. At plus 36%, the strongest sales growth was reported in May 2020, when all 64 of the Hornbach DIY stores and garden centers initially affected by official sales restrictions had been reopened (March 2020: minus 2%; April 2020: plus 17%).

The full-year outlook for 2020/21 published in the 2019/20 Annual Report is nevertheless unchanged for now. In this respect, the Board of Management points to the considerable and hardly predictable macroeconomic risks to the company’s business performance looking forward due to the coronavirus crisis. From a current perspective, it still deems it likely that consolidated sales for the 2020/21 financial year as whole will approximately match the level reported for the 2019/20 financial year (Euro 4.4 billion) and that consolidated adjusted earnings (adjusted EBIT) will fall slightly short of the previous year’s figure (Euro 181.8 million).

The definitive figures for the first quarter of 2020/21 will be published in the Quarterly Statement on June 26, 2020.
 

* There were no non-operating earnings items either in Q1 2020/21 or in the previous year’s quarter.