The Beacon Lighting Group Ltd (ASX: BLX) share price will be under the spotlight today after reporting a bright set of numbers.
Beacon is Australia's biggest lighting retail business that has been operating for over 50 years. It sells lighting, ceiling fans and light globes. The company has 116 stores across the country.
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Beacon Lighting's shining FY21 half-year result
The lighting business reported that its sales increased by 23% to $151.3 million. The gross profit increased by 35% to $103.6 million thanks to the revenue growth and an increase of the gross profit margin of 6.1 percentage points to 68.5%. Less discounting helped support the gross margin.
Company store comparable sales increased by 24.9% and online sales grew by 111.1% to $14.4 million. Beacon International sales increased by 45.2% to $5 million.
Beacon's operating expenses only grew by 9.2% $56.7 million. This allowed earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to rise by 43% to $47.5 million. The EBITDA margin increased by 4.4 percentage points to 31.4%.
The earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) shot higher by 63.1% to $34.7 million, with the EBIT margin improving by 5.6 percentage points to 22.9%.
Net profit after tax (NPAT) growth was the brightest of all, increasing by 75% to $22.2 million. The NPAT margin improved 4.3 percentage points to 14.6%.
Using the underlying numbers, sales grew 23.5% and NPAT grew 132.8% to $22.2 million.
Beacon reported that its net operating cashflow rose by just over 120% to $38.7 million. This helped Beacon pay down $19.1 million in debt. It finished with a net cash position of $29.3 million. The company also invested $8.5 million in retail properties, with half of it being co-funded by non-controlling interests.
Since the end of FY20, the Beacon Lighting share price has risen by more than 70% (before the market opened).
Beacon Lighting dividend announcement
The Beacon board declared an interim fully franked dividend of 4.2 cents per share, which represents an increase of 61.5% compared to the prior corresponding period.
Outlook for the second half
Beacon revealed that it has bright prospects for the second half, with store sales continuing at an elevated level compared to the start of the second half of FY20.
It's continuing to try to help its trade customers. Stores now open at 7:30am to allow trade customers to shop and new trade specific products are being developed and progressively released to stores. Beacon Lighting now has 39,800 'Trade Club' customers. Trade Club sales increased by 50.8% in this result.
There will be further improvements to its websites. Beacon is also launching a new website to sell directly to consumers in the USA.
