Styles & Wood enjoys pre-tax profit rise to £12m

Styles & Wood, the fit-out specialist, enjoyed a strong rise in pre-tax profit to £12m last year.

Gerard Quilligotti, chairman, said: “This is the fourteenth year of sustained growth. We have commenced operations in 2008 with a record orderbook. We expect to build a further year of progress.”

Turnover in the 12 months to 31 December 2007 was stronger at £320m (figure in 2006: £270m). Profit in the previous year ran to £7.5m.

Styles & Wood employs 420 staff and operates from four offices in Altringham (its headquarters), London, Nottingham and Milton Keynes.

It provides its store development services to premier UK retailers through four divisions and their operating profits were:

• £9.8m - Store Fit (margin of 3.5%)
• £3.0m – Store Care (margin of 3.0%)
• £1.0m – Store Planning (margin 1.0%)
• £200,000 – Store Data (margin 0.2%)

The figures exclude central costs that were not allocated to operating divisions.

Quilligotti said: “In 2007 we made good progress in pursuing the business objectives set out in Pathway, our strategic plan. We achieved record levels of repeat business, retained all of our existing framework arrangements and more customers engaged more of our services.

“We saw growth across all our retail sectors, in particular food and banking.

“In Food Retail we added The Co-operative and Morrisons which means in 2008 we will serve all the major supermarket operators.

“In Retail Banking we added new framework arrangements with Lloyds TSB and Nationwide and saw revenues from this sector grow by 51%.”

In its first full year as a listed company, Styles & Wood’s associated costs, including that of employee shares schemes, was £500,000 (2006: nil).

Future listed company costs will rise as new share scheme awards are made in 2008 and 2009.