Kingfisher, Europe's largest home improvement retailer, missed forecasts with a 6.6% fall in third-quarter profit, hurt by a soft market in France and adverse foreign exchange movements.
The company trades as B&Q in Ireland, Screwfix and B&Q in Britain and Castorama and Brico Depot in France.
It said today it made a retail profit of £223m in the 13 weeks to October 31. That compared with analysts' average forecast of £234m, according to a company-compiled consensus.
The results were hit by £17m of adverse foreign exchange movements on the translation of non-sterling profits and around £5m of additional store development costs in France and Poland compared to last year.
"Trading conditions have followed a similar trend to the first half of the year, reflecting the more encouraging macroeconomic backdrop in the UK offset by a softer market in France," the company's chief executive Vronique Laury said.
In France, home to the group's biggest division, sales at stores open more than a year rose 0.1%, compared to analysts' average forecast of a rise of 0.5%.
That reflected a flat overall home improvement market and a slow house building market.
In Britain, like-for-like sales increased 4.6%, ahead of analysts' consensus forecast for an increase of 3.7%. Total group sales fell 2.5% to £2.65 billion.
In March, Laury outlined plans to reshape Kingfisher, including closing some B&Q stores, cutting the number of product lines, developing unified garden and bathroom businesses and starting a revitalisation programme for big stores across Europe.
She said today that the strategy was making good progress.
Kingfisher is the world's third biggest do-it-yourself (DIY) player behind US companies Lowe's and Home Depot.
