Galiform Plc, the owner of Howden Joinery, is today issuing an update on trading for the year ended 26 December 2009.

The Board is pleased to report that the business has continued to perform resiliently and has seen satisfactory performance on all key measures for the year as a whole.

Howden Joinery UK depot sales for the year of £756.4m (2008: £782.9m) were down 3.4%, declining 4.6% on a same depot basis (i.e. excluding depots opened in 2008 and 2009).

In the last three periods of the year, from 5th October to 26th December, total sales of around £220m were over 6% higher than in the corresponding period in 2008. This included the significant benefit of three trading days in the Christmas week. As well as adding an extra day's sales, this meant that there was no early tail-off in sales around the previous weekend, as had occurred in 2008. Excluding these benefits of a longer pre-Christmas week, sales in the last three periods of 2009 are estimated to have been around 4% higher than in the comparable period in 2008.

The gross margin performance in the final periods of the year continued to be strong and, taken together with the sales performance, it is now expected that profit before tax for the year will be comfortably above the top end of the current range of market expectations.

Next announcement

Galiform will release its 2009 Preliminary Results on 4 March 2010.

Enquiries