TRAILBLAZERS Tricky times


APRIL 2025 CONTENTS


Alsford Timber AW Champion Beatsons Browns


behind and ahead H


indsight, they say, has perfect vision. If we knew at the beginning of 2023 what we know now, would the figures we feature in this year’s Trailblazers benchmarking


supplement be the same?


Towards the end of 2023, most people in the sector were assuming that 2024 would be a tough year, one to be endured, but that 2025 would prove to be the sunny uplands. We believed that there would be, if not quite a housebuilding boom, then a real uplift, something to look forward to, something that would replenish the coffers. We reckoned without the October 2024 Budget, and now it looks as though the figures we feature here might be as good as they are going to get, until the tail-end of 2025, at least.


I’m focussing so much on the 2023 figures because exercises like this can only be done in retrospect. We have to work with what we have, and in the vast majority of cases, what we have is the Companies House records, which are in the public domain. Different year-ends mean most of the results we quote are for the financial year ending December 31 2023, a few finish before that, a few afterwards. The 2024 results have been released for a number of these merchants, however, in most cases too late for us to take them into consideration when compiling the financial tables. Once again, we have done a small amount of double-counting, for the simple reason that some acquired companies do still report separate results to Companies House, as well as those of the parent organisation. In which case, we have used


CONTACTS Builders Merchants Journal


Datateam Business Media London Road Maidstone Kent ME15 8LY Tel: 01622 687031 www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net


EDITORIAL


Group Managing Editor: Fiona Russell Horne 01622 699101 07721 841382 frussell-horne@datateam.co.uk


Assistant editor: Will McGill 01622 699185


wmcgill@datateam.co.uk


the figures for those individual companies on their company pages to show how they have contributed to the overall picture. The League Tables, however, exclude those separate entries.


The churn in ownerships has continued, much of it, as in previous years, outside private money coming in, buying up merchants and making groups grow ever larger. Happily, there is still evidence of independent businesses growing under their own steam, acquiring others and keeping them family- owned. I say happily, because we need diversity in ownership models as much as in anything else. While this year’s publication shows how complicated the industry’s finances have become, it also evidences that, despite the challenges – and they are many and serious – there is still an underlying strength to the sector. Year-on-year sales growth, stockturn, and operating margin are the key ratios we use to determine the BMJ Index, our way of assessing the overall health and competitiveness of a company. If any one of the three is negative – i.e. sales declined year-on-year, or the company recorded an operating loss – the result will be a negative Index score. Another caveat: the formulae we use for the tables can’t always cope with negative numbers, hence the reason some entries come up as nil or n/a.


Fiona Russell Horne Group Managing Editor


NB: FINANCIAL TABLES. The majority of Year-Ends of the merchants featured are December 31. Where they differ, this is stated in the company information panel.


Beggs & Partners Boys & Boden


Beesley & Fildes Bradford & Sons Builder Depot C&W Berry C Brewer


County Building Supplies Carver Covers


EH Smith


Elliott Bros Frank Key


Haldane Shiells Grafton


Highbourne


Howarth Timber Huws Gray


James Hargreaves IBMG


John A Stephens JT Atkinson JT Dove


John Nicholls Joseph Parr


James Burrell Kellaway LBS


Lawsons Lords MKM


Myers Building Supplies MGM Timber MP Moran Markovitz


Nicholls & Clarke PGR Timber Pochin


Production Controller: Nic Mandeville


ADVERTISING


Group Sales Manager: Dawn Tucker 01622 699148 07934 731232 dtucker@datateam.co.uk


Media Account Executive: Morgan Borthwick-Hunter mborthwick-hunter@datateam. co.uk


01622 699126


Publisher: Paul Ryder


pryder@datateam.co.uk


National Timber Group Robert Price & Sons Strutka STARK


Sydenhams © Datateam Business Media Ltd 2025


All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic or mechanical including photo-copying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher. The title Builders Merchants Journal is registered at Stationers’ Hall. Suppliers have contributed towards production costs of some photographs in this issue.


Travis Perkins Turnbull Tippers


Williams


UK Plumbing Supplies Wolseley UK


April 2025 A supplement to builders merchants journal


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