Britain's Kingfisher reports sales up, no Brexit impact yet

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LONDON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Kingfisher (Frankfurt: 812861 - news) , Europe's largest home improvement retailer, said it was cautious on the short-term outlook after the UK vote to leave the European Union but said it had seen no impact yet on its business, with sales up in the last three months.

Véronique Laury, chief executive of the firm which trades as B&Q and Screwfix in Britain and Castorama and Brico Depot in France, said the Brexit vote had created uncertainty for the economic outlook.

However, she noted: "There has been no clear evidence of an impact on demand so far on our businesses."

Industry data published last week showed British retail spending bounced back in July as sales promotions and good weather outweighed concerns that the Brexit vote would deal an immediate hit to the economy.

Kingfisher said group sales at stores open over a year rose 3 percent in the three months to July 31, its fiscal second quarter, having been up 3.6 percent in the first quarter.

Total (LSE: 524773.L - news) sales rose 8.4 percent to 3 billion pounds ($3.92 billion).

Like-for-like sales in Britain and Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) were up 7.2 percent, with B&Q up 5.6 percent and Screwfix up 13.3 percent.

In France underlying sales fell 3.2 percent, hurt by widespread industrial action and exceptionally wet weather.

Market conditions in Poland remained supportive with like-for-like sales up 7.3 percent.

In January Laury announced a strategy to boost Kingfisher's annual profit by 500 million pounds from 2021 that will cost 800 million pounds over five years to deliver. The plan involves unifying the product offer across the business, improving its ecommerce capabilities and driving efficiencies.

The firm also plans to return 600 million pounds to shareholders over the next three years through share buybacks. It has so far returned 150 million pounds.

For its 2016-17 year analysts are on average forecasting an underlying pretax profit of 692 million pounds versus 686 million pounds in 2015-16.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in Kingfisher, up 8.6 percent so far this year, were down 1.3 percent at 353.8 pence by 0710 GMT, valuing the business at 8 billion pounds. ($1 = 0.7657 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Kate Holton, Greg Mahlich)