B&Q owner Kingfisher has defied gloom on the high street as booming UK sales helped its profits to grow last year. 

Chief executive Thierry Garnier said the DIY retailer was boosted by its UK divisions, as sales at B&Q and Screwfix ‘led the way’. 

Sales in the UK rose 3.3per cent to £6.72billion for the year ended 31 January 2026.

This boosted annual profits, which rose 6 per cent to £560million, despite the business flagging higher employment costs in the UK.

Bosses at the FTSE 100-listed chain, which also owns Castorama in France, now expect annual profits for the current year to be between a range of £565million to £625million.

Garnier said: ‘With a mixed consumer environment across our markets, we continue to focus on delivering our strategic priorities, maintaining cost discipline and driving shareholder returns.’

Kingfisher is seen as one of the country’s most reliable retailers after its profits surpassed the £1billion mark for the first time in 2022, following a flurry of pandemic-era home improvement.

Demand for DIY products has remained resilient in the face of a worsening economic backdrop. Last week, Wickes announced plans to open 70 new stores after growing across every part of its business. 

Wickes boss told the Daily Mail and This is Money the home improvement market in the UK was 'distinctive' due to the huge numbers of poor quality homes. 

However, Kingfisher may face investor jitters over the impact of the war in the Middle East on the British housing market and consumers' energy bills. 

Garry White, chief investment commentator at Charles Stanley, part of Raymond James Wealth Management, said: 'Should the fallout from the conflict in the Middle East push borrowing costs higher, mortgage affordability would again become a drag on Kingfisher’s business. 

'The group depends on an active housing market to support demand as people fix and improve newly purchased homes. Even so, moves in Washington aimed at securing a swift resolution to the Middle East crisis suggest these fears may prove overdone. But one thing unites Donald Trump and the situation in the region – both remain utterly unpredictable.'

Garnier said there was a ‘very, very limited impact on our supply chain’ due to the conflict.

And he said the business had not experienced an impact from the war on trading yet - and had seen a ‘fairly resilient customer the past two years’. 

He said the group was ‘really skewed towards repair’, meaning that ‘a good part of our business is less discretionary.'

But he said increases to business taxes in the UK ‘makes managing [a] retail business difficult’, in reference to hikes to National Insurance contribution payments for employers, wages, packaging taxes and business rates over the past two years.

He reiterated the industry’s pleas for business rates reform in order ‘to have a fair level playing field between brick and mortars and online players.’

‘That's a tax that is disproportionately supported by stores and not by online operations,’ he said.

There are hopes that the Government will reform the way business rates are calculated over the next few years.

But the Chancellor was lambasted last year after many retailers discovered their bills will go up in April, alongside increases to other costs including wages.

This was despite Labour pledging to level the playing field and soothe retailers with large physical presences, who have long complained about the lack of tax paid by online warehouses in comparison.