B&Q-to-Screwfix owner Kingfisher’s (KGF) shares are down roughly 11.5% over the past month with investors fearing a slowdown in consumer spending in the second half of 2025 which would delay the recovery in ‘big-ticket’ spending. Kingfisher’s smaller home improvement rival Wickes (WIX) recently observed (10 September) that UK consumer confidence has ‘remained subdued’ and savings rates remain high with consumers ‘cautious of undertaking major home improvement projects’.

To restore optimism in the story, Kingfisher will need to confirm continued market share gains in all key regions, reiterate full-year 2026 guidance for adjusted pre-tax profits in the £480 million to £540 million range and please investors with its utterances on cost savings and capital returns when it posts first-half results on 23 September.

Mr. Market will be seeking signs of improving trading trends in Poland as well as France, the latter showing signs of stabilisation after a prolonged downturn in 2023 and 2024. Given the big divergence in performance between Kingfisher’s UK business and its operations in France and Poland, questions may start to surface about whether it might look to focus on these shores and divest other parts of the group.

Berenberg forecasts a ‘solid’ half-year showing from Kingfisher, looking for a 1% year-on-year rise in adjusted pre-tax profits to £338 million on a 0.8% rise in group-wide like-for-like sales. However, the broker expects to hear of a second-quarter like-for-like sales slowdown at B&Q as this summer’s searing UK temperatures ‘may have stifled DIY projects’. 

UK UPDATES OVER THE NEXT 7 DAYS

FULL-YEAR RESULTS

22 Sep: Wilmington

23 Sep: Fonix, Smiths Group

24 Sep: Redcentric, Time Finance

25 Sep: DFS Furniture

FIRST-HALF RESULTS

22 Sep: Elixirr International

23 Sep: Henry Boot, Hvivo, Keystone Law, Kingfisher, Oxford Biomedica, Raspberry Pi, The Mission Group, Yu Group

24 Sep: Directa Plus, Everyman Media, Pinewood Technologies, Saga

25 Sep: STV

26 Sep: Ceres Power Holdings

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