Discount retail chain boosts figures and aims to double store numbers
Discount retail chain Home Bargains has dispelled gloomy high street trends with improved sales and profits – and announced plans to double its stores portfolio to 1,000
Trading as TJ Morris, the Liverpool-based family run firm achieved a 15% boost to revenues of £2.471bn in the year to June 30 – helped by opening more stores throughout the financial year – and a 15% rise in pre-tax profits from £202.7m last year to £233.3m.
Cash, and cash equivalents, at the end of the financial year stood at £219m, up from £143.12m in 2018.
Average employee numbers for the year rose from 20,313 to 22,816.
By June 30 the company traded from 506 stores, but it revealed in its latest filing at Companies House that it intends to eventually increase its estate to between 800 and 1,000 stores.
One of its most recent openings was a new site in St Helens in May.
Such expansion would challenge discount chain rival B&M, which is also based in Liverpool, in the Speke district south of the city centre. B&M currently operates around 600 stores.
An interim dividend of £10m was paid to the directors, compared with nothing last year. Directors recommend no final dividend will be paid.
The accounts also reveal the business has created a new market gardening subsidiary, Mere Hall Farm, which had not started trading by June 30.
TJ Morris was founded as a single store in 1976 by majority shareholder Tom Morris. Brother Joe, who is believed to own a 5% stake in the business, is also on the board.
