B&M business booms after it snaps up Wilko stores

BUSINESS at B&M has been boosted by Wilko stores it took on after its High Street rival collapsed.

The homewares discount chain said profits for the year to March 30 rose 9.8pc to £629m. That was at the top end of the £620m to £630m previously expected. Sales surged 10.1pc to £5.5bn as B&M opened 47 stores in the UK – including former Wilko shops.

‘The openings are trading well, including those Wilko stores acquired in the year, which are performing ahead of expectations,’ a B& M spokesman said. It did not reveal how many of the new stores used to be Wilko shops.

B&M bought 51 sites from the collapsed discounter for £13m last September. Chief executive Alex Russo said his business has kept a ‘relentless focus’ on keeping prices affordable for shoppers.

And he added: ‘The business and team are well set up for the year ahead.’

He aims to open at least 45 B&M stores in the UK in each of the next two financial years.

Since the start of the cost-ofliving crisis, it has cashed in on consumers’ appetite for cheaper goods.

Bobby Arora and his brother Simon, the former chief executive replaced by Russo in 2022, acquired B&M in 2004.

At the time, it was an ailing chain of 21 stores but the brothers have grown it into a retail-park success story with hundreds of shops. Now it runs around 741 B&M stores in the UK and 124 in France.

It also operates 335 stores under a B&M Express brand and Heron Foods, a discount freezer chain, in the North of England, Midlands and Wales.