Home Bargains rides discount boom as profits leap

FAMILY-owned retailer Home Bargains continued its spectacular recent growth in the year to June as profits leapt 12% to £124.8m.

The Liverpool company owned by Tom Morris and run by him and his family, has more than 10,000 staff at 300 shops nationwide, and is expanding increasingly outside its northern heartland,

Having broken through the £1bn barrier for the first time in 2013, turnover rocketed 21% to £1.28bn, driven by new store openings as well as like-for-like growth, according to newly-filed documents at Companies House.

Home Bargains is the latest value retailer to report strong sales and profits. Liverpool rival B&M Bargains and Poundland both floated this year and are both growing aggressively.

The company, launched by Tom Morris in 1976 is also on the expansion trail and plans to have 400 shops by the end of the current financial year.  

The retailer said it wants to grow to 700 shops and 20,000 staff in the next five years and is poised to open a £70m 1million sq ft  distribution centre in Amesbury near Salisbury to “further service expansion of the geographic base into the southern part of the UK.”

In the directors’ report accompanying results, parent company TJ Morris  said: “The company aims to continue its current levels of growth to become the leading sector retailer in the UK.”