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The UK’s leading fishing tackle retailer opened its 60th store in the first half of its financial year, posted a 5.1% increase in revenue, but found its venture into the European market ‘challenging’.
Angling Direct delivered what it described as a resilient performance with revenue growth of 5.1% to £56.4m (£53.6m). In store and online business in the UK was up 6.9% despite what it described as the well documented challenges to the consumer backdrop and the sustained drought impacting footfall and seasonal demand.
Total UK like-for-like sales grew 2.9% against a strong previous year comparison, reflecting the strength of the omni-channel proposition and increasing customer reach. Its MyAD loyalty club currently has more than 696,000 subscribers compared to 600,000 in January.
Outside the UK, it told investors that the European market remains challenging with sales from the region down 30.4% compared to the previous comparable period. Sales were £1.8m compared to £2.5m. “The company has continued to focus on key markets in Germany and the Netherlands with our European business trading in line with the Board’s expectations during the period,” it said.
“Strategically, the group has retained its disciplined approach to trading, targeting profitable sales to reduce overall European losses while retailing optionality in the medium-term to build a sustainable and efficient European business as market conditions become more favourable.”
During the half year, Angling Direct continued its new store opening programme, utilising its strong balance sheet with three new outlets in Crawley, Kettering and Gloucester. “The group is developing a pipeline of additional store and stock only acquisitions as the challenging consumer backdrop creates potential for further consolidation in the UK market. The group now operates 60 stores across England and Wales.”
Steve Crowe, CEO, said: “Despite the well documented challenges to the UK consumer environment, alongside a UK wide drought impacting fish and fisheries, I am pleased to report that we have delivered a resilient start to the year, making further progress against our recently upgraded medium-term objectives and gaining further share of the UK angling market.
“UK like-for-like sales grew 2.9%, with our higher ticket categories proving robust – even as fuel prices and a lack of rainfall impacted footfall and seasonal demand. While mindful of the ongoing headwinds in the consumer sector, we remain focused on gross margin discipline and cost efficiencies, leveraging our previous investments to deliver consistent earnings growth.
“We remain confident in achieving our full year consensus market expectations and are well positioned to capitalise on the attractive long-term growth opportunities across our markets as we deliver our medium- term objectives.”
