Chancellor’s Autumn Budget hits flooring specialist James Halstead’s UK market

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Autumn Budget has hit the UK market of Manchester-based flooring specialist, James Halstead.

In a trading update this morning ahead of publishing results for the half year to December 31, 2024, the international group said its UK core home market has experienced more caution following the new Labour Government’s first budget and the subsequent changes to living wage and national insurance.

It said its UK sales in the first six months are in line with the comparative for the previous year, but have been constrained, in part, as a result of lower confidence leading to customers revising their capital spend and deferring renewal.

Also, the six-month period has seen a degree of destocking in its UK distributor customers.

However, despite this, and given the level of backlog of repairs and renewals in the health sector and education, Halstead said it can only be confident of prospects in the UK.

The company sells, for the most part, commercial flooring across the world and has seen increased confidence in the segment of resilient sheet flooring that is sold into the healthcare, education and other institutional sectors.

It said regional sales into the Middle East and the Americas have been particularly buoyant.

In other overseas markets there are many positives in Halstead’s broad reach of sales. While Australia and New Zealand sales have declined, turnover in the Americas, the Middle East and Mediterranean is progressing.

Overall sales are slightly below last year, with profit before tax comparable to the level in the first half of 2024.

The company said it remains ungeared with cash levels broadly similar to the comparative (2023: £62.4m) notwithstanding increased dividends and higher UK corporation tax.

The board’s expectations for the full year are that profit before tax will be in line with market expectations.

The company expects to announce its results for the half-year on March 31, 2025.