Strong demand in Britain and Poland helped Kingfisher to beat forecasts for first-half profit but Europe's largest home improvement retailer said it remained cautious on the outlook for France, its most profitable market.
The firm runs B&Q in the UK and Ireland, the Screwfix chains in Britain and Castorama and Brico Depot in France and other countries.
It said it made underlying pretax profit of £436m in the six months to July 31, up 13.5% on the same time last year.
That compared to analysts' average forecast of £430m and £384m in the previous year.
Total sales for the six month period rose 2.7% to £5.75 billion pounds on a constant currency basis.
"Performance has been driven by Poland and the UK, especially Screwfix, and a stable profit performance in France," said the company's chief executive Véronique Laury.
Kingfisher also benefited from £17m of favourable currency movements on the translation of non-sterling retail profits.
"In the UK, the EU referendum has created uncertainty for the economic outlook, even though there has been no clear evidence of an impact on demand so far on our businesses. In France we remain cautious on the short-term outlook," she said.
In January, Laury announced a strategy to boost Kingfisher's annual profit by £500m from 2021 that will cost £800m over five years to deliver.
The plan involves unifying the product offer across the business, improving its ecommerce capabilities and driving efficiencies. Laury said the programme was on track.
The firm also plans to return £600m to shareholders over the next three years through share buybacks. It has so far returned £160m.
Before today's update analysts were on average forecasting a full-year underlying pretax profit of £773m, up from £686m in 2015-16.
