TrustFord boss Stuart Foulds celebrates group’s record H1 performance

TrustFord chairman and chief executive Stuart Foulds has expressed “pride” in his workforce’s delivery of a record £13.6m pre-tax profit in the first half of 2021.

Foulds told AM that the Ford of Britain owned AM100 car retail group had recorded its strongest ever first six months in this year, delivering a pre-tax profit of £13.6m on a turnover of £1 billion.

“I am really proud of every one of our 3,000 colleagues who, through these difficult times, stepped up to the mark and delivered these tremendous results”, said Foulds.

He added: “Our Fleet and CV department, as I have said before, has and continues to really outperform the market delivering an amazing 23,000 CVs with an order bank today running at a further 40,000 orders secured.

“I’m also really delighted with progress in our PartsPlus business which delivered £23m of parts to our wholesale customers in this period.

“Total vehicle sales for the period were in excess of 50,000 and we continue to see record levels of enquiries from customers all over the UK who absolutely love our TrustFordNOW proposition on both sales and servicing.”

TrustFord’s strong first half results are welcome news to the business after Foulds claimed he was “relatively pleased” with the group’s COVID-impacted 2020 financial results published earlier this year – despite recording a £5.2m pre-tax loss.

The trading period to December 31, 2020, showed that revenues dipped to £1.41bn as pre-tax profits declined from 2019’s £5.6m to £5.2m.

But Foulds told AM that TrustFord had emerged from the crisis in a position that meant it was still left with the prospect of a “record year” in 2021, despite last year’s 17.8% decline in revenues and 192.9% decline in profit before tax.

“After being closed for such long periods I think we’re relatively happy with where we find ourselves,” he said.

“We sold 77,000 cars last year and our profit before interest was £6 million.

“The big thing for us was liquidity. We ended up with a £700 million banking facility which we didn’t have to use in the end.”

Foulds added: “2021 will be a record year TrustFord. We’ve started the year strongly and we’re flying at the moment.”

In the latest edition of AM magazine TrustFord aftersales director Stuart Creswell spoke of his optimism after TrustFord was able to resume marketing its rapid TrustFord Now aftersales offering after the easing of COVID-19 restrictions allowed two technicians to work on a car.

The process will help the group embrace what is expected to be a boom period for MOTs and servicing work in September after DVSA test extensions created a new market peak.