13 January 2023

Wincanton plc

("Wincanton" or the "Group")

 Q3 TRADING UPDATE

Robust trading in a challenging external environment

Wincanton plc, a leading supply chain partner for UK business, today announces an update on its third quarter (Q3) trading performance, including the seasonal retail peak activity.

The Group has continued to trade in line with expectations across all four business sectors. Year-to-date, we have delivered encouraging revenue growth of 5.5% and the pipeline of new business opportunities continues to increase.

As expected, Group revenue for Q3 was lower year-on-year by 1.4% against tough comparatives. The Group's Grocery & Consumer sector fell by 7.0% whilst the General Merchandise sector remained broadly flat (+0.6%), both in comparison to the record highs seen in Q3 FY22.

Our eFulfilment sector revenue increased by 13.6% in the third quarter driven by new wins including The White Company, City Electrical Factors and Saint Gobain, where operations commenced earlier in the year. While the performance in Cygnia remains robust, recent postal strikes and pressure on discretionary consumer spending meant that online volumes were below expectations for some customers.

Revenue from our Public & Industrial sector decreased by 5.8%, mainly due to lower volumes across the building materials market and contract attrition. However, this was partially offset by growth in our public sector businesses, which has increased year-on-year by 25.5% YTD. The Group continues to support HMRC at various inland border clearance facilities together with ongoing activities for Defra.

Over the last nine months, the UK's economic, political, and labour environments have been particularly challenging, impacting both our top-line growth trajectory and our underlying cost base. We expect these difficult conditions to continue in FY24. Despite the volatility and headwinds in the external environment, our diversified customer base continues to offer resilience and the Board expects the Group to report profit for the current year (FY23) in line with market expectations¹. 

James Wroath, Chief Executive Officer of Wincanton, said:

"I would like to thank all my colleagues for their hard work and commitment, which has been so important to our performance over the festive period and throughout Q3 trading. We remain focussed on driving growth with both new and existing customers; our strong pipeline is critical to Wincanton's ability to negate the challenging external environment that we are facing. We continue to make great strides in supporting our technology propositions for customers, including automation and robotics, and this is supporting strong operational delivery across the Group."

¹ Analyst consensus for FY23 profit before tax of £62.0m with range £61.4m to £62.6m

For further information please contact:

Wincanton Plc                                                                                                  Tel: +44 12 4971 0000

James Wroath, Chief Executive Office

Tom Hinton, Chief Financial Officer

Headland                                                                                                           Tel: +44 20 3805 4822

Susanna Voyle/ Henry Wallers/ Marta Parry-Jones

E: wincanton@headlandconsultancy.com