Diamond performance from family-owned jewellery company

Family-owned jewellery company Beaverbrooks, based at St Annes-on-the-Sea near Blackpool, is reporting a 5% increase in turnover to £119m.

Operating profit before discretionary payments was £12.2m, compared to £15.2m in the 2015/16 period.

Net assets and equity shareholders’ funds both grew in the period, with Beaverbrooks increasing its stock holding by 13% to accommodate two new stores within its estate.
The 98-year-old business also donates 20% of post-tax and post distribution profits to its charitable trust, and has this year donated £1.076m to charity.

As part of its mission to ‘enrich lives’, all 940 employees are encouraged to support time-giving initiatives and 1,533 hours were paid to facilitate volunteering in 2016/17.
In addition, 29% of its employees were involved in Workplace Giving at the year-end (now 34%).

Beaverbrooks is the UK’s top jewellery retailer and second biggest supporter of the scheme on the high street.

During the period, Beaverbrooks’ employees gave £29,069 through payroll giving. The net donation was then matched by the company resulting in total donations of £51,000.

Chairman Mark Adlestone said: “This period stands out as one with the most competitive trading conditions, so we were pleased to maintain turnover.

“We were adversely affected by the weakness of Sterling following Brexit. We hadn’t anticipated this happening and therefore didn’t hedge accordingly and so this, alongside increasing precious metal prices, resulted in additional costs that impacted directly on gross profit.

“Despite these pressures, we’ve continued our investment programme, opening two new stores in Straiton (in Edinburgh) and Westfield Stratford (in East London), refurbishing existing retail stores and investing in our website to enhance our online customer experience.”