10:14 am, February 1, 2023
Stoneacre Motor Group finished 2022 with an impressive £37.3m pre-tax profit, but has warned ‘realignment’ with its manufacturer partners could be on the cards.
Accounts published officially today on Companies House show profit before tax for the period last year increased by over 82 per cent on 2021.
Revenue for the dealer group – which was ranked 25th in the latest Car Dealer Top 100 list and has the company name of Decidebloom Ltd – also rose substantially from £788m to over £1.18bn.
New car sales across its 64 locations and 137 franchise sales points came to 27,363 cars, while sales of used cars totalled 32,047.
Combined, the sales of new and used cars were a 17.3 per cent like-for-like increase – an indication Stoneacre’s ‘strategic plans for dealing with and exiting the pandemic have been a success’, the business said.
Meanwhile, other areas of the business also saw rises, including service department revenues which grew by 9.4 per cent, accident repair centre revenue by 6.6 per cent, and parts revenue grew ‘in line with expectations’.
Government Coronavirus grants decreased from £13.4m in 2021 to £582,000.
During the year Stoneacre bought RMB Automotive – as exclusively rumoured by Car Dealer – which represented Toyota, Lexus and Renault in the north east.
It also snapped up two Toyota dealerships, located in Durham and Sunderland, from Jardine Motors Group.
Stoneacre’s auction business, Newark Motor Auctions, saw sales increase by 25 per cent and net profit rising by 56 per cent thanks to the increase in the new dealership acquisitions.
Looking ahead, directors said the business and its manufacturer relationships are likely to look different over the course of the next two years.
‘Several OEMs are considering their future franchise representation which will result in the group realigning its representation with its preferred partners within the next two years.’
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