A strong set of maiden full year results shows Lords has delivered record revenue and earnings growth.

Lords, a leading distributor of building materials in the UK, announces its annual results for the year ended 31 December 2021 (‘FY21’ or the ‘period’).

There was a strong performance across the Group, with all businesses demonstrating financial and operational progress.

Highlights include:

  • Record revenues, increasing 26.3% to £363.3 million (FY: £287.6 million) driven by the Group’s enhanced customer proposition and continued deployment of strategic initiatives
  • Like-for-like revenue grew by 18.1% and was 20.8% ahead of 2019 showing a swift rebound and acceleration post pandemic
  • Customer and colleague satisfaction scores remain excellent, at 4.7 out of 5.0 in both instances, reflecting the Group focus on colleague engagement and customer service
  • Further progress with people, plant and premises organic growth strategy, including digital platforms with all eight transactional websites developed and managed in-house
  • Digital revenue grew 31% in FY21 and now represents 6.3% of Group revenue
  • Good progress with sustainability programme, as Lords continues to reduce its environmental footprint, invest in its people, enhance the Group’s health and safety whilst supporting worthwhile projects in its communities
  • Four acquisitions since year end, enhancing the Group’s geographical presence and offering scope for further growth through extended product ranges
  • Robust pipeline of acquisition opportunities underpins the inorganic growth potential
  • Confident in Lords ability to fulfil objective to be a £500 million revenue business by 2024 and to achieve a 1.5% increase in Adjusted EBITDA margin over the medium term
  • Demand in (‘RMI’) sector focused product offering remain strong, Merchanting division has continued to deliver growth in line with management expectation 
  • Customer demand remained strong across Heating and Plumbing division (‘H&P’). However, APP Wholesale affected by industry wide boiler supply constraints, impacting division’s revenues throughout Q1 2022
  • The supply issues are expected to ease moving into H2 2022, and therefore the Group’s revenues continue to trade largely in line with market expectations and adjusted profit before tax is in line with expectations of approximately £16 million.

Shanker Patel, CEO of Lords, said: “We are delighted to report such a strong set of maiden full year results where Lords has delivered record revenue and earnings growth, and demonstrated our ability to deliver against our strategic and financial objectives set out at IPO.

"First and foremost, I would like to thank our colleagues across the UK, who without their fantastic commitment and support for our vision, these results would not have been achieved.

“Due to the fragmented nature of the market in which we operate, Lords has a unique opportunity to deliver both organic and acquisitive growth and we are excited to successfully demonstrate this today.

"As we build our size, reach and product range, we will be able to further enhance our excellent service to our customers and this underpins our exciting growth strategy. Our industry has not been immune to the widespread challenges caused by price inflation and supply issues, the latter of which has recently affected the supply of boilers in our AAP business.

"We have taken all the necessary steps to ensure that we continue to achieve our growth and profit forecasts and with the current boiler issue, where demand remains strong, we will take every possible action to protect the strength of our business.

“Progress in the new financial year has continued to be strong, our four new value accretive acquisitions are performing in line with our expectations and we look forward with confidence as we aim to deliver sustainable and growing returns to our shareholders.”