B&M sales top £500m

B&M RETAIL, the Liverpool-based discount retail chain owned by brothers Simon & Bobby Arora, saw its sales grow by a fifth to £512.7m in 2010, while pre-tax profits edged up by almost 12% to £35.8m.

Accounts for the company’s parent firm Firesource also show that the company’s net asset base increased to £64.5m (£39.8m) following its purchase of the Opus Homewares business in August last year.

The accounts show that Firesource paid £40.2m for the Opus Homewares business on August 2 last year in a deal that allowed the Arora family to take some cash out of their retail empire. A further £5m is owed to them in deferred consideration.

Opus Homewares contained a portfolio of former Au Naturale stores which the Arora family had bought from administrators in 2008. The stores were largely based in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Debt funding for the deal was provided by the company’s bank, Barclays. As a result, net debt increased to £41.1m from just over £2.2m a year earlier.

The B&M Retail business has thrived in recent years as other high street chains have struggled. Since purchasing the business from private equity firm Phildrew Ventures in 2005, the Arora brothers have presided over a ten-fold increase in sales.

B&M has also picked up groups of stores through acquisitions of distressed assets. It bought Oldham-based GlynWebb in 2006 and then converted half of the stores to B&M outlets before closing the business, and it has subsequently bought former Woolworths units from administrators as well as picking up 11 former Focus units last month.

During the past year, the group has also relocated its headquarters from Squires Gate business park in Blackpool to a new purpose-designed 625,00 sq ft headquarters at Estuary Commerce Park in Speke, south Liverpool.

Around 600 people work in the headquarters, but the firm now employs more than 7,000 staff from a network of over 230 stores.