Lords Group Trading plc
Lords Group Trading plc is a UK specialist distributor of building materials, plumbing, heating and DIY goods, trading through 51 locations across three divisions: Merchanting (builders' merchants, light and heavy side), Plumbing and Heating (P&H, wholesale distribution to independent plumbers' merchants, installers and the public), and Digital (CMO Superstores, the UK's largest online-only retailer of construction and plumbing/heating products through nine specialist websites). Established over 40 years ago as a family business, it is listed on AIM.
FY2025 in sixty seconds
year to 31 Dec 2025 · approved 20 May 2026 · 128 pages · Companies House
Lords Group Trading plc sells building materials, plumbing and heating goods through 51 branches and, since buying online retailer CMO Superstores in June 2025, through websites too. Revenue rose 8.3% to £472.8m, but profit before tax was -£5.2m, a wider loss than the -£2.6m of the year before.
New branches and the CMO purchase lifted sales, while plumbing and heating sales slipped slightly. Higher employer National Insurance and minimum wage costs added to expenses. The bottom line was also hit by charges the company treats as outside normal trading, including write-downs in the value of some branches and an acquired timber business. Before those charges, operating profit fell to £9.2m from £10.4m.
Cash at the year end was £15.0m, and borrowings fell to £28.5m from £42.1m. This was helped by selling and leasing back property and by tighter control of stock and customer payments. Almost no money was raised from shareholders, and the dividend was cut to 0.52p from 0.84p.
Management said the near-term outlook is unclear but expects profits to improve sharply when demand recovers. The auditor raised no doubts about the company's ability to keep trading, and bank facilities were renewed in April 2026.
Merchanting like-for-like growth and three new branches (Mansfield, Maidstone, Bicester)
Merchanting LFL revenue growth of +3.1%; total revenue up 6.0% to £227.1m including new branch contributions
page 16P&H product/boiler mix and margin management
Gross margin improved 60bps in P&H, margin improved 70bps Group-wide as competition sought market share in H2
page 37Near-term market visibility remains limited and with macroeconomic uncertainty the near-term economic recovery supported by interest rate reductions is uncertain; the Group is significantly better positioned than a year ago
page 7Policy of scaling the full-year dividend in line with adjusted earnings per share. Final dividend of 0.20p proposed (FY24: 0.52p), giving total FY25 dividend of 0.52p (FY24: 0.84p), 2.2x covered by adjusted EPS; interim dividend of 0.32p was held flat
page 387 years on one page · FY2019–FY2025
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GBP millions, negatives in brackets. Per-share lines in pence. Share counts in millions. Margins and returns as percentages, calculated from the filed figures. later is what a following report restated the figure to; vs is a second reading that disagrees. The figure shown is the one the original filing printed, and both readings are kept. Click any figure: opens the report page it was read from, highlighted; shows how it was calculated.
50 figures restated in a later report
Every figure is read again from the following year’s report: 197 confirmed, 50 restated.
| Line | Year | As first filed | In the later report |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2023 | £3.3mFY2023 report | £3.5mFY2024 report | |
| FY2023 | £2.8mFY2023 report | £7.4mFY2024 report | |
| FY2023 | 165.5mFY2023 report | 165.5mFY2024 report |
47 more figures were restated in FY2019 to FY2022, which a free account opens.