The Kingfisher (LSE: KGF) share price has had an erratic few years. But it was steady early on 25 March, despite a fall in full-year profits.
The stock went a bit crazy in the Covid years. But it’s back to being pretty much flat over five years now.
Profit fall
In the latest year, revenue stayed up pretty well, with just a 1.8% fall at constant currency. But that led to a 25% fall in adjusted pre-tax profit to £568m, and a 26% fall in adjusted earnings per share (EPS) to 21.9p.
But the market was expecting a tough year. So I’m not surprised the share price didn’t suffer from these results — at least not so far. It’ll have been helped by a strong cash position, which I think is pretty good after the year we’ve had.
The firm kept its dividend at 12.4p per share, for a 5.3% yield on the previous close. And it’s still 1.8 times covered by adjusted earnings, which seems fine.
How’s the cash?
Kingfisher still has net debt of £2.1bn. But that’s down from £2.3bn in the previous year. And it also includes £2.3bn in lease liabilities under IFRS 16.
With free cash flow up, and in such a tough year, that looks healthy to me. The company thinks so too, and has started on a new £300m share buyback.
We have what looks like a decent balance sheet, and a well-covered dividend. I think Kingfisher could be a good one to consider adding to a Stocks and Shares ISA for long-term passive income.
International trade
The UK might be out of the EU, but Kingfisher still does a lot of business across Europe. It owns B&Q and Screwfix in the UK, and also Castorama and Brico in France. It’s going well in Poland too.
I think this could feed through to a rising share price as the valuation looks a bit low. There’s a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of about 11, dropping to a bit over nine on 2026 forecasts.
CEO Thierry Garnier spoke of “France, where the market has been impacted by low consumer confidence.” And that’s not great. But the company has launched a “new plan to simplify French organisation and significantly improve performance and profitability of Castorama.”
Another tough year
There’s further risk from the outlook for the current year as things still look a bit tough.
The board says it expects to see adjusted profit before tax of between £490m and £550m. That would be a fall of between 3% and 14% on these latest profit figures.
The firm itself says it’s “cautious on the overall market outlook for 2024 due to the lag between housing demand and home improvement demand“.
So, property slump, mortage rates… it could all means hard times for Kingfisher. But the cash flow potential makes me think this could be a stock for long-term income investors to consider.
