Greggs has its cake and eats it with a 41pc surge in earnings
IT’S BEEN a tasty year for Greggs as full-year, pre-tax profit jumped 41 per cent to £58.3m on sales of £804m, a rise of 5.5 per cent, it announced yesterday.
The baker, which has 1,650 stores across the UK, said like-for-like store sales for the year ending 1 January grew 4.5 per cent in comparison to a 0.8 per cent decline in 2013.
Its total dividend payment for the year comes in at 22p per share, up 12.8 per cent from the previous year. In the first half of 2015 the firm “has the capacity to return up to £10m to shareholders” by resuming its share buyback programme.
Chief executive Roger Whiteside said: “2014 was a year of significant change and an exceptional step up in performance for Greggs as we began to implement our new strategic plan centred on the growing food-on-the-go market. We have improved both our food offer and the shop experience for customers. Market conditions have been more favourable and like-for-like sales have grown throughout the year.”