Final Results
Financial Highlights
· System sales1 increased by 14.6% to £766.6m (2013: £668.8m)
· Underlying2 profit before tax, of £54.8m, up 15.1% (2013: £47.6m)
· Like-for-like sales3 growth of 11.3% in 724 UK mature stores (2013: 7.0% in 670 mature stores)
· Underlying profit before tax for UK & ROI increased by 14.3% to £63.1m (2013: £55.2m)
· Underlying earnings per share:
o Diluted earnings per share up 10.5% to 26.4p (2013: 23.9p)
o Basic earnings per share up 10.8% to 26.6p (2013: 24.0p)
· Statutory operating profit up at £54.0m (2013: £20.4m)
· Statutory basic earnings per share up at 25.9p (2013: 10.7p)
· Final dividend increased by 10.1% to 9.69p per share (2013: 8.80p) bringing the total dividend for the year to 17.50p per share up 10.1% (2013: 15.90p)
· 44 new stores opened in the period (2013: 57 stores) with eight closures (2013: four) resulting in a total of 894 stores in four countries as at 28 December 2014
· UK & ROI online system sales increased by 30.2% to £440.0m (2013: £338.0m) with online sales accounting for 69.4% of UK & ROI delivered sales (2013: 61.5%). Of this, 44.2% of online orders were taken through a mobile device (2013: 30.9%)
· Strong balance sheet with an adjusted net cash position4 of £11.0m (2013: adjusted net debt of £13.6m)
Current Trading
Like-for-like sales in the first eight weeks of 2015 are as follows:
UK (£) 9.5%
ROI (€) 4.8%
Germany (€) 0.1%
Switzerland (CHF) 7.7%