Howden Joinery's founder and CEO to retire next year

(Refiled to remove repetition of share price)

LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - British kitchen supplier Howden Joinery said on Friday its founder and chief executive Matthew Ingle will retire in the first half of 2018 after 22 years with the group, prompting a fall in its share price.

Ingle will be succeeded by the boss of home improvement firm Screwfix, Andrew Livingston.

He has been CEO of Screwfix, a division of Kingfisher (Amsterdam: KF6.AS - news) , since 2013.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in Howden were down 1.3 percent at 412 pence at 0725 GMT on Friday, having dropped to 406 pence in earlier trading, valuing the business at 2.6 billion pounds.

Ingle founded Howdens in 1995 with just 14 depots and first-year sales of 1 million pounds ($1.30 million). It split from MFI Furniture in 2006.

In 2016 Howdens reported annual sales of more than 1.3 billion pounds ($1.7 billion), pretax profit of 237 million pounds and more than 450,000 account holders.

It currently operates from 650 depots across the UK, and sees scope for up to 800.

Ingle will become Howdens' honorary Lifetime President. ($1 = 0.7721 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; editing by Jason Neely)