The DFS Furniture Plc directors have declared an interim dividend for the period ending 30 June 2024 of 1.1p per ordinary share to be paid on 30 May 2024. DFS Furniture plc shares will trade ex-dividend from 18 April 2024 and the record date will be 19 April 2024.
Other financial highlights include:
- Resilient underlying profit performance, £8.7m, up £1.6m on H1 FY23 despite weaker than expected market demand
- Reported profit before tax of £0.9m, after deducting expected non-underlying costs of £7.1m (£4.2m cash cost), including costs associated with closure of one our factories and September's refinancing
- Group order intake down -1.1% year on year, outperforming the wider market
- Gross sales down to a greater extent as expected, -5.6% year on year (£39.4m) due to the unwind of an elevated opening order bank at the start of the prior year resulting in a higher level of delivered sales in the comparator period
- Revenue from continuing operations down -7.2% year on year; higher than the gross sales reduction due to Bank of England base rate changes increasing the cost of providing interest free credit (IFC) which we partially mitigated through amending our IFC proposition
- Gross margin rate (+220 bps) and lower operating costs more than mitigated the revenue decline and impact of cost inflation on PBT(A)
- Net bank debt reduced from the FY23 year end position of £140.3m to £133.9m and leverage reduced from 1.9x to 1.6x (H1 FY23 £135.6m and 1.7x)
