Another tough six months for its plumbing and heating division knocked profits at Travis Perkins PLC (LON:TPK), with a £40mln restructuring programme now in train to turn the business around.
Group profits dropped to £167.6mln (£175.5mln) in the half year to June, though sales improved to £3.22bn (£3.11bn) as the consumer side that includes Wickes and Toolstation was resilient.
John Carter, chief executive, said it had been a mixed first half and recent data on consumer confidence and housing transactions pointed to this being the picture for the rest of 2017.
READ: Travis Perkins flags up rising inflation as plumbing struggles
Consumer revenues rose by 7.3% or by 4.7% like-for-like, with Wickes‘s kitchen and bathrooms popular and Toolstation doing well online.
Plumbing & Heating, though, has been a headache for some time and saw revenues 1.5% lower in spite of decent price increases.
After carrying out a strategic review Travis has started to simplify the operation with City Plumbing and PTS to run under one management team and wholesale to be a stand-alone unit.
Profits in the plumbing division are expected to be weak for the remainder of this year, but stabilise in 2018 said Carter.
The interim dividend rises by 1.6%.