Following today’s release of Halfords’ results for the 52 weeks ending 28 March 2025; Oliver Maddison, retail analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view: “Halfords’ backloaded FY2024/25 grew with consumer confidence, exhibiting 2.3% growth on a like-for-like basis against a relatively strong comparative of 5.0% in its FY2023/24. Sales were flat in H1 as consumer confidence declined between the July election and the October budget, but grew in H2 alongside consumer sentiment as shoppers felt more free to spend. While its cost savings of over £30m were greater than the upcoming £23m cost of the October budget, Halfords nonetheless stressed its exposure to the country’s general economic position.
“Group underlying PBT performed on the upper end of already uprated forecasts, but is still set to be lower than the £36.1m achieved in FY2023/24. Nonetheless, Halfords can be cautiously optimistic about its profitability given the growth in gross margins that it experienced in H2 due to price optimisation and continued cost negotiation with suppliers. Continued outperformance on the services side of the business will have also increased margins and profitability. Investors took the news positively, with Halfords’ share price rising by over 10% when markets opened. The incoming CEO, Henry Birch, will no doubt be heartened by this vote of confidence as Halfords continues its transformation.
“The company’s growth continued to be driven by the autocentres side of the business, which delivered l-f-l growth of 3.7% against a strong comparative of 10.7% in FY2023/24. This growth was driven by the strong performance of its Services, Maintenance and Repair (SMR) offering, while Halfords indicated that its sales of consumer tyres continued to decline. Autocentre revenue will likely continue to drive growth as the rollout of ‘Project Fusion’, which integrates its retail services and garages into single locations, to another approximately 75 sites, is set to continue to pay dividends, with Fusion sites seeing sales increase by up to 50%.
“The retail side of the business, which represents around 60% of sales, began to recover from a weak H1 across both motoring and cycling, seeing 1.7% l-f-l growth across the whole year, but was still significantly contingent on promotions, particularly in the case of cycling, with cost savings being a key driver to making a promotions-driven sales strategy profitable.”
