Pre-tax profits at B&M have nearly halved despite accelerating efforts to to turn around the troubled discounter.
The group revealed this morning its pre-tax profits had fallen 47.3% to £227m in the 52 weeks to 28 March 2026, as a “challenging market” combined with execution issues to depress the group’s bottom line. Adjusted pre-tax profits were likewise down 37.7% year on year.
And despite 3.6% headline revenue growth to £5.8bn for the group, UK B&M stores’ like-for-like sales were broadly flat at -0.1%.
The group’s Back to B&M Basics turnaround plan, launched in October last year, has showed signs of life, however, as Q4 LFLs rose from a steeper decline in Q3 to 0.1% growth.
“The past six months has seen us sharpen our pricing, improve on-shelf availability in best-selling brands and revamp our in-store promotions,” said CEO Tjeerd Jegen, who was appointed in June 2025 to pull the business into shape.
“We cleared discontinued lines well in Q4 and are now embarking on SKU count reductions across all our FMCG categories.”
Strong and growing cash generation of £801m has allowed the group to cut its net debt by 15.9% to £656m. And Jegen promised “a year of investment” in 2027.
He said the group would work hard to deliver growth, balancing new store openings with investment in its store formatting.
B&M opened 64 new stores in the year, with 33 net openings.
Jegen added the company was confident it could mitigate the rising costs of energy, with savings flowing through to the company’s bottom line once the company returns to LFL sales growth.
RBC analyst Richard Chamberlain said Jegen’s strategy was “credible”, with the main risk being any delay to B&M’s expected pace of turnaround.
”B&M has a strong track record on buying and offers SKU discipline and tight cost control,” he added.
”The business should benefit from consumers remaining value conscious and should have some runway for growth given it has only 2% share of UK retail overall. However, recent LFL trends have been subdued, and we think B&M still needs to convince in terms of value for money perception.”
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