Domino’s Pizza sales rise as firm seeks to offload foreign businesses
Sales at Domino’s rose 3.7 per cent year on year to £352m in the final three months of last year, it said in a trading update today, as the UK pizza chain continues to try to sell its loss-making overseas businesses.
The prompt-pizza pioneer’s international sales fell five per cent in the same period to £25.3m, however, underlining the company’s issues with its foreign branches.
Domino’s said it expects full-year operating profit in the UK and Ireland to be in line with market expectations, at between £102m and £104m.
Yet it said it expects to make a loss of around £20m in its directly-operated overseas markets – which are Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Iceland.
In October, the pizza delivery firm said it would quit these four European markets. “We are not the best owners of these businesses,” chief executive David Wild said at the time.
Today, Domino’s said its focus is on selling its Norway business first, “given the significant operating losses in this market”.
“Once we have agreed a transaction for Norway, we will focus on progressing transactions for our businesses in Sweden, Switzerland and Iceland.” The pizza firm said it will “update the market in due course”.
Known for its deep-dish, American style pizzas, Domino’s UK is a franchise of US-based Domino’s Pizza.
The British Domino’s said today that, following the success of its cheeseburger pizza in 2018, it has sold almost 600,000 of its “New York Hot Dog” pizza since it launched in 2019.
Online sales growth in the fourth quarter was 8.3 per cent for the UK and 11 per cent for Ireland. In the UK, online sales now account for 92 per cent of all delivery sales and 83 per cent of total sales.
The trading update came just over a month after Domino’s UK’s finance chief David Bauernfeind died in an accident while on holiday in Mauritius.
Wild, who announced his intention to retire in August, said: “David will be deeply missed by all who knew him and worked with him. He leaves behind a high-quality finance team who have shown remarkable resilience and dedication over the past month, and we are well advanced in the search for an interim chief financial officer.”