Building and DIY products e-commerce specialist CMOStores.com has posted successive year-on-year growth largely driven by a surge in home improvement projects throughout 2020.
The Plymouth-based company has released its latest results, to December 31, 2020, which show market share gains driving impressive sales figures across its divisions.
In a strong sign of the construction retailer’s resilience against what was a challenging backdrop in 2020, CMO’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA), a measure of profitability, has grown by 300%.
Overall, the company experienced organic growth of 17%, with this is expected to be further bolstered in the coming months by the recent acquisition of online tile retailer Total Tiles, which itself is seeing impressive rates of growth.
Once again, the company’s Doors Superstore performed exceptionally well, increasing sales by 45%, while the Roofing Superstore saw sales growth of 25%.
Jonathan Lamb, chief financial officer, said: “Last year was a uniquely challenging time for many companies, however, our agility as an e-commerce building products retailer allowed us to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the shift in homeowner purchasing habits as we continue to disrupt the market.
“This was hinted at in our half year results, which saw CMO post sales in excess of £23million across our superstores, and has been confirmed by our annual results and in particular the EBITDA growth.”
At a time when UK homeowners were undertaking large-scale home improvement projects, CMO was well-placed to capitalise on this trend with key investment in customer services.
And with the trend for homeowners upgrading their properties likely to continue post-pandemic, CMO has sighted further opportunities for future growth and expansion as well.
Sue Packer, CMOStores.com managing director, said: “Our investment in our e-commerce experience as well as in our people meant that our customer service capability also increased, giving us scope to position ourselves as the preferred partner for larger home improvement schemes. Our goal is to support customer projects from start to finish – we want customers to understand that good builds start here.”
In February 2021 the Burrington Way-headquartered “disruptive” company acquired Ipswich’s Total Tiles, which was named on The Sunday Times Virgin Atlantic Fast Track 100 list in 2019.
The transaction was the second acquisition by the CMOStores group, following the takeover of DoorWeb in 2018. CMO intends to continue its acquisition strategy to expand the group in the coming years, supported by private equity house Key Capital Partners (KCP) which advised on the Total Tiles transaction.
The company said it has experienced a sustained period of growth since it secured investment of £8.65million from KCP in 2017. The business now offers consumers more than 75,000 building products supported by a market-leading customer service offering.
