LEAGUE TABLES
Healthy competition T
SALES: £15.4BN FROM 53 COMPANIES 1. Travis Perkins 2. Jewson
he Trailblazers list just keeps growing. In 2018 we identified a total of 49 merchant businesses with sales of more than £25m; last year the number rose to 51; and this year it’s grown again, to 53. Newcomers Browns and CRS bring another £64m of turnover to our analysis, showing that in total the Trailblazers account for combined sales of £15.418bn, against last year’s £14.684bn. Travis Perkins maintains its undisputed position at the head of the table – in fact it has increased its lead, through a combination of acquisition and organic growth. Last year TP’s sales were equal to the combined sales of the next 13 companies on the list, and this year its sales are equal to the combined sales of the next 15. That’s not really a meaningful statistic, but it serves to underline the colossal difference in scale between TP and its competitors. NB. Because Trailblazers uses information in the public domain from Companies House, the financial tables used predate some of the industry’s most recent acquisitions, therefore companies such as Parker Building Supplies and Chandlers appear here as separate entities, as do Ridgeons and Huws Gray. LIkewise, in the league tables, Rembrand Timber appears on its own, outside of the National Timber Group.
Sales growth
The table tells the story: 53 companies, and 41 of them showed solid sales growth in their latest financials – in fact 20 of them achieved double-digit sales growth. Overall, it’s a picture of strong, solid performance. Digging a little deeper, it’s clear that at Lords, Huws Gray, Atkinson, and Haldane Shiells, acquisitions contributed significantly to their growth. New branch openings played a major part at Grant & Stone, MKM, and MGM. Newcomers CRS and Browns clearly trade on rather different business models from the traditional merchant and are worth close examination. And at the bottom of the table, a drop in sales isn’t necessarily a bad thing: Bradfords, for instance, disposed of some subsidiaries which had been draining cash from the business, and immediately saw a substantial rise in stockturn and productivity. The same applied at Kent Blaxill: they sold a business and sales dropped as a result – but stockturn shot up.
Staff numbers
Checking the industry headcount is always interesting, because it’s a measure of confidence: when employers sense a chill wind, the first response is often to look for savings on the salary bill. Direct year-on-year comparisons are unreliable, however, because of acquisitions, branch openings and closures, disposals and re-structuring; and of course, because we add more companies to Traiblazers each year. But for what it’s worth, the 53 companies listed in this year’s survey employed a total of 63,183 people in their latest reporting periods. A year before that, 51 companies employed a total of 62,571; before that, 49 companies and 59,228 people; and a year before that, 48 companies and 58,057 people. Or to put it another way, only a handful of the businesses listed this year recorded a significant drop in staff numbers – and that includes several which made substantial disposals during the year. Overall, the employment trend is firmly positive.
3. Wolseley UK
£6,740.5m £2,005.4m £1,768.0m
4. Grafton Merchanting GB £1,178.5m 5. MKM
6. Huws Gray
7. Bradford & Sons 8. Ridgeons 9. EH Smith
10. Haldane Shiells 11. Builder Depot 12. Howarth Timber 13. Lawsons
14. James Hargreaves 15. Grant & Stone 16. JT Atkinson
17.Covers
18. Williams 19. Lords
20. Sydenhams 21. Elliott Bros 22.RGB
23. Joseph Parr
£393.8m £214.0m £174.3m £172.7m £142.4m £127.7m £106.7m £102.5m £95.1m £88.6m £86.3m £84.2m £81.0m £80.3m £78.5m £78.4m £72.9m £72.5m £69.7m
24.Parker Building Supplies £69.5m 25. Nicholls & Clarke 26. James Burrell 27.HPS 28. LBS
29.JT Dove
30.MP Moran
31. John Nicholls 32.C&W Berry 33. Chandlers
34.MGM Timber
35.Walter Tipper 36. Crossling
37. Rembrand Timber 38. Alsford Timber 39. Robert Price 40. Kellaway 41. AW Lumb 42. Markovitz 43. Kent Blaxill 44. Carver
45. Beatsons
46.Beggs & Partners 47. Browns
48. Beesley & Fildes
£65.8m £64.1m £61.1m £59.7m £58.8m £58.1m £58.0m £55.9m £55.7m £53.4m £51.6m £50.7m £49.9m £49.4m £48.9m £47.6m £43.5m £40.1m £39.0m £38.8m £35.6m £35.1m £33.4m £32.9m
49.Myers Building Supplies £31.2m
50.CRS
51. AW Champion 52. Frank Key
53. John A Stephens 4
£30.7m £30.3m £29.9m £26.2m
TRAILBLAZERS
SALES GROWTH: STRONG, SOLID PERFORMANCE 1. Lords 2. CRS
3. Browns
4. Grant & Stone 5. MKM
6. Huws Gray 7. C&W Berry
8. Beggs & Partners 9. JT Atkinson
10. James Hargreaves 11. Carver
12. Haldane Shiells
13.Myers Building Supplies 14. AW Lumb
15.MGM Timber 16. LBS
17.JT Dove
18. John Nicholls 19. Markovitz 20. Sydenhams
21. Howarth Timber 22. Williams
23. James Burrell 24. Robert Price 25. Chandlers 26. Kellaway
27. Joseph Parr
28. Beesley & Fildes 29.RGB
30. Alsford Timber
31.Covers
32. Travis Perkins
33.Parker Building Supplies 34. Lawsons
35.Walter Tipper
36. Grafton Merchanting GB 37. Jewson
38. AW Champion 39.HPS
40. Frank Key
41. Builder Depot 42. EH Smith
43.MP Moran 44. Kent Blaxill 45. Crossling 46. Ridgeons
47. Nicholls & Clarke 48. John A Stephens 49.Wolseley UK 50. Elliott Bros
51. Bradford & Sons 52. Rembrand Timber 53. Beatsons
36.0% 29.6% 24.8% 19.6% 18.5% 18.2% 16.2% 16.0% 15.6% 14.7% 14.6% 14.3% 14.3% 13.0% 12.9% 12.2% 12.1% 11.4% 11.3% 11.1% 10.1% 9.5% 8.6% 8.5% 7.5% 7.0% 6.6% 6.5% 6.0% 5.1% 4.8% 4.8% 4.3% 3.9% 3.8% 3.5% 3.0% 2.8% 2.8% 2.5% 1.8% 0.5%
-0.1% -1.0% -1.3% -1.6% -2.9% -3.3% -6.3% -6.3%
-11.2% n/a n/a
A supplement to builders merchants journal April 2020
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