The value retailer said it now expected full-year group adjusted EBITDA for its 2026 financial year to be between £440m and £475m, down from a previous guidance of £470m to £520m.
Like-for-like sales at B&M UK during golden quarter trading (13 weeks to December 27, 2025) were down by 0.6% on the same period in 2024.
A late surge that saw LFL growth jump to 3% in December did not quite make up for low single-digit declines in October and November. However, the value retailer said that “early January trading has seen a positive LFL trend continue, with a good customer response to our clearance events across seasonal ranges and discontinued lines.”
The positive December trading was driven by strong sales in its seasonal ranges, including grocery, giftware, toys and other Christmas products.
Group revenue growth landed at 2.6% year over year in constant currency terms.
Q3 started with a bang for the retailer as chief financial officer Mike Schmidt resigned in October following a blunder that omitted £7m of overseas freight costs. B&M said that the third-party review into the matter was now complete and that the implementation of its recommendations on IT and financial operational processes was now underway.
The retailer said its gross margin remained below prior year levels due to price investments as part of its “Back to B&M Basics” turnaround plan and that it expected this trend to continue into the next quarter.
“We are identifying opportunities to make deeper investments in clearing discontinued lines to support planned reductions in SKU count and to clean up stock as we restore on-shelf availability towards industry benchmarks,” said chief executive Tjeerd Jegen.
“As with our pricing actions, these are investments in the long-term strength of B&M, but they do impact near-term financial performance.”
Jegen added that the revision in guidance was also driven in part by the underperformance of Heron Foods. Like-for-like sales at the discount supermarket chain were only marginally down at 0.1% in the quarter, but B&M said that “profit performance is below our expectations and a further review of its customer proposition is being conducted.”
Trading at B&M France was up by 0.4% in like-for-like terms.
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