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Halfords Group PLC: Interim Results for the 26 weeks to 26 September 2025
Halfords Group PLC (HFD) 27 November 2025 Halfords Group plc Interim Results for the 26 weeks to 26 September 2025 (“HY26”)
On track to deliver FY26 expectations following a strong first half
Halfords Group plc (“Halfords” or “the Group”), the UK’s leading provider of motoring and cycling services and products, today announces its interim results for the 26 week period ended 26 September 2025.
*Alternative Performance Measures (“APMs”) are defined on page 10. ** Sales breakdown excludes miscellaneous sales of £0.9m (HY25: £0.8m). Strong financial performance
Good strategic and operational progress
Team update
Outlook[4]
Henry Birch, Chief Executive of Halfords, commented: “I am very pleased to be announcing a strong set of HY26 results that show good financial, strategic and operational progress. Cycling was the stand-out performer, with LFL sales up 9%. Our consumer garages also performed particularly well, up around 8%, driven in part by the ongoing roll-out of our new format Fusion garages. Looking ahead, there are significant opportunities for us to create further value through improvements in our technology and data capability, which are key areas of focus for us as we plan for the future. While the operating environment remains unpredictable, our combination of needs-based products and services, as well as market leading positions in both motoring and cycling, give us the confidence that we will continue to grow our business in line with our plans.”
Investor and analyst meeting: Our interim results presentation has been published on our website, www.halfordscompany.com, alongside this announcement. A strategy presentation for analysts will take place at 10.30 this morning at Peel Hunt, 100 Liverpool Street, London, EC2M 2AT. A recording will subsequently be uploaded to www.halfordscompany.com. At 13.00 this afternoon, we will also be hosting a live interactive webcast for retail investors, via the Engage Investor platform. To join the retail investor webcast please follow this link: Halfords Group plc Retail Investor webcast, 27th November , 13:00 For further information:
Notes to Editors Halfords is the UK’s leading provider of motoring and cycling services and products. We operate via 370 Halfords stores, two Performance Cycling stores (trading as Tredz), 498 consumer garages and a network of 92 commercial fleet locations nationwide. Customers also have access to c.250 mobile service vans (trading as Halfords Mobile Expert and National) and c.550 commercial vans. Customers can shop at halfords.com and tredz.co.uk for pick up at their local store or direct home delivery, as well as booking garage services online at halfords.com. Through its subsidiary Avayler, Halfords also sells the Group’s bespoke, internally developed software as a SaaS solution to major clients worldwide. Cautionary statement This report contains certain forward-looking statements with respect to the financial condition, results of operations, and businesses of Halfords Group plc. These statements and forecasts involve risk, uncertainty and assumptions because they relate to events and depend upon circumstances that will occur in the future. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results or developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made only as at the date of this announcement. Nothing in this announcement should be construed as a profit forecast. Except as required by law, Halfords Group plc has no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or to correct any inaccuracies therein.
I am very pleased with our performance in the period, delivering growth in underlying Profit Before Tax (“PBT”) despite the very significant labour cost and other inflation we have faced. At the same time, we have made good progress with key strategic initiatives including the rollout of Fusion, with 79 Fusion garages now trading. This is continuing to improve the garage experience for customers and colleagues alike and links the motoring assets within a town more closely. Like-for-like (“LfL”) sales growth of 4.1% is a strong performance in what has been a challenging environment for many consumer-facing businesses, and demonstrates the strength of our unique, service-led customer proposition across both Retail and Autocentres. Excellent cost control and working capital management have resulted in another period of strong cash generation, providing the balance sheet flexibility to accelerate our planned investments in brand and digital customer experience in H2 while declaring a flat interim dividend year-on-year (“YoY”). We couldn’t have achieved any of this without the commitment, skill and professionalism of our more than 12,000 colleagues. I want to sincerely thank them for going above and beyond in providing expert advice and brilliant service to millions of customers across every touchpoint of our business. There is plenty more to do to optimise our operations in the short-term, but without doubt we have taken significant steps forward in HY26 – and I am confident that we have the right team in place to move the business forward with the appointments of Jess Frame as Retail Managing Director, Adam Pay as Garages Managing Director, and Sarah Haywood as Chief Information Officer in recent months. Self-help and cycling recovery in Retail In retail, we have continued to focus on the attributes which differentiate us: helpful, specialist advice, add-on services and exclusive brands. The majority of transactions taking place in our Retail stores involve some form of assistance from a colleague and around 80% of the c.3m service events which took place in HY26 at Halfords happened in our retail store car parks. No other business offers colleague advice and services such as wiper blade and bulb fittings on demand, and this represents a major competitive advantage and barrier to disruption from online retailers. Meanwhile, our investment into dedicated Automotive Service Managers in around 80 stores also enables us to capture demand for more complex services into our garages. Overall, more than half of Group revenue is service-related, up from 24% in FY19. Our digital channel remains of central importance and a large proportion of customer journeys begin online either through a product search or booking on our website. However, when it comes to digital product sales we have a lower market share than in physical retail. This represents a clear opportunity for future growth, not least because 4 in every 5 purchases online are fulfilled via click and collect in our stores, which creates opportunities for additional sales on collection. While online competition limits our pricing power in some of the more commoditised product categories, we benefit from a large proportion of our range being either own-brand or exclusive to Halfords, typically representing excellent value relative to competitor brands. This is particularly visible in cycling where the vast majority of our range is own-brand, a key differentiator for our Retail proposition which allows us to better control gross margin and reinforces our credibility as a cycling specialist. Key brands are Carrera, which includes what we believe to be Britain’s best-selling bike in its Vengeance model, and Boardman, which is a more premium brand – a Boardman bike having won either an Olympic or a Paralympic gold medal at every Games since 2008. The first half of this year saw significant growth in our cycling business with 9.0% LFL sales growth, ahead of a market in recovery which also benefited from a warm, dry summer. We sell two-thirds of children’s bikes in the UK and delivered a fantastic performance at Tredz, our performance cycling business, which grew double digit in the first half. Motoring products showed lower rates of sales growth as we removed a number of low margin products from our shelves, negatively impacting sales but benefitting margin rate. Product categories with a high service attachment such as air conditioning, dashcams and oils showed good growth, demonstrating the value of our unique, service-led retail proposition to our customers across both motoring and cycling. Driving operational excellence in Autocentres The optimisation of our consumer garages business has continued apace, and under new leadership, we have delivered further profitable growth in HY26. Our consumer garages have continued to grow in the more profitable Service, Maintenance and Repair (“SMR”) segment, and we have also delivered improved margins in our tyres business through a focus on high-value add-ons, including wheel alignments, which also deliver considerable customer benefits ranging from improved handling and safety to better fuel economy. Overall, HY26 saw improved garage utilisation across the estate. Despite continued declines in the consumer tyres market, our consumer garages, which include our 79 Fusion locations, saw LfL sales growth of around 8% in HY26 while continuing to provide excellent service to our customers as demonstrated by an increase in NPS to 65.3%. We remain on track to deliver c.150 Fusion garages by FY27. Levels of cross-shop, i.e. retail customers becoming garage customers, continued to increase underpinned by our growing Halfords Motoring Club proposition where we also saw growth in both free and Premium membership. In addition to our consumer garages, our B2B division includes our commercial fleet services business, which maintains and repairs truck fleets across the UK. We have continued to expand our network of depots with a new site in Avonmouth while also commencing a programme of fleet upgrades to improve environmental and operational performance. Also in our B2B division is Avayler, our garage operations software business, which is in pilot stage in the first of Bridgestone’s c.2,400 garages in North America and is currently in the advanced stages of building and testing at MyCar, the largest garage network in Australia. Leveraging the Group opportunity Halfords is truly unique in the market: our Group spans products and services, motoring and cycling, consumers and businesses, physical and digital. We keep millions of people in the UK and Ireland on the road, actively improving their lives by taking the hassle out of car and bike ownership. Our relationship with our customers isn’t just transactional – we provide expert advice and friendly service, including on-demand fitting of the products we sell, under a recognisable brand that has been trusted for generations. We do all this in a way that offers them the ultimate in convenience, with a nationwide network of stores, garages and mobile vans to provide essential services at a time and location to suit them. At the same time, these many millions of interactions provide us with data covering almost half of the UK car parc with potential for a broader eco-system of products and services. The roll-out of Fusion and creation of the Halfords Motoring Club have been important first steps in demonstrating the value of the Halfords Group as a single provider for all our customers’ motoring needs. We are well on our way to 150 Fusion garages, doubling profitability at maturity and with a payback on initial capital expenditure of just two years. Meanwhile we now have close to 6 million Halfords Motoring Club members, with over 400,000 of those paying c.£20m of annual recurring revenue for benefits including an annual MOT, free car checks and other discounts while providing us with valuable vehicle data that enables us to serve our customers even more effectively. These Premium members spend on average around 3 times as much as a non-member each year, with substantially higher rates of cross-shop. But there is much more value we can create with improvements in our technology and data capability, and the appointment of Sarah Haywood, most recently CIO at the Carlsberg Group, as Chief Information Officer demonstrates our commitment to making these changes a reality. In the meantime, we have begun to make smaller, but nonetheless meaningful, improvements to our digital customer experience. Our services-led model means that our physical locations, including our mobile vans, will always be at the heart of what we do and are fundamental to our model. However, an increasing number of customers begin their journeys online and it is critical to our future success that we put our best foot forward digitally as well as in-person. Our single, groupwide website has already played an integral role in creating our market leading positions across our core markets – for example, in HY26 we were the most-visited online tyre retailer in the UK – but there is more we can do to create a seamless experience for our customers across all touchpoints. Fit for the Future Later this morning, we will be sharing details of our updated strategy which builds on our strong fundamentals, focusing on disciplined execution rather than radical change. Driven by a new and experienced management team, this plan will leverage the key strengths of our business: a trusted brand leading in attractive markets, unrivalled scale and expertise, a hard-to-replicate services offering, financial resilience, and significant opportunity from technology and data. Our approach will be in three phases, successful execution of which will drive LfL sales growth, operating margin expansion, progression in underlying PBT and ultimately, a return on capital employed[6] (“ROCE”) which exceeds our cost of capital.
This phasing is reflected in an updated capital allocation framework, which continues to prioritise maintenance of a strong and resilient balance sheet (net debt to adjusted EBITDA ex-leases no greater than 0.8x). We will continue to pay a dividend in-line with our cover-based policy of 1.5x to 2.5x underlying profit after tax. Meanwhile, M&A is not a priority in the near-term.
Outlook[7] Our strong HY26 performance means that we are confident in delivering FY26 underlying PBT in-line with consensus[8] while investing in our digital experience and brand and building cycling stock ahead of next year’s summer peak. We continue to expect capital expenditure for the full-year to be within the guided £60m to £70m range. Next update Our next scheduled update will be a full-year trading update in April 2026 prior to our full results for that period in June.
Henry Birch Chief Executive Officer, Halfords Group plc 26 November 2025
Group financial results All numbers are stated on a post-IFRS 16 basis unless otherwise indicated.
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