Sales slump puts B&Q boss in firing line

THE head of Kingfisher's British DIY operation, B&Q, is coming under intense pressure after the group reported dire sales figures.

B&Q chief executive Rob Cissell is being blamed by a number of investors for the business's failure to deliver expected sales and profits figures. And some sources are now predicting that Cissell might be replaced by Ian Cheshire, who is credited with Kingfisher's successful push into new markets, particularly China.

Profits forecasts for Kingfisher have been slashed after the company delivered first-quarter results last week.

Only last autumn, analysts were suggesting that the group - which also includes Castorama and Brico Depot in France, and other operations in Poland, Italy and China - would make about £780m this year.

But now they are forecasting little more than £600m. Kingfisher's joint broker UBS puts likely profits at only £590m - almost £100m less than the company made last year.

The first-quarter figures showed that underlying sales at B&Q, which still accounts for more than half of Kingfisher's global business, fell by 7.7%. Group chief executive Gerry Murphy blamed weak consumer spending. But B&Q is performing worse than its rivals.

In France, Kingfisher's main DIY business, Castorama, saw underlying sales fall 4.4% - also worse than the market as a whole.

Kingfisher admitted last week that it had abandoned plans for a big expansion of B&Q Warehouses - huge stores of 100,000 square feet or more. At present, it has 112, and had suggested that it would eventually have at least 175. The abandonment of the target, revealed in Financial Mail in March, marks the end of a strategy that was to have formed one of the major planks of its UK expansion.