Mr Kipling’s ‘biggest ever year’ bakes in sweet-looking profit at Premier Foods
The owner of some of the UK’s best loved and most famous food brands hailed standout performer Mr Kipling, on Thursday which helped Premier Foods eat City profit forecasts for lunch.
Mr Kipling – the brand behind the “exceedingly good cakes” tagline, in use continually since 1967, when the range made its debut – had its “biggest year ever” year in 2025.
And the star performance was fed by a new form of the teatime confection: cake tubs.
Alex Whitehouse, Premier’s £1.8bn company’s chief executive, put the success down to tapping into a “bitesize trend” in packaging designed to make sharing easy.
“When people want to treat themselves, they want it to be worthwhile, so indulgent, but they might only want a small amount. This is one of the reasons we believe this range has done so well, as they are catering to the trend to treat yourself, with a small, bitesize treat.”
Previous novel confections included Mr Kipling-branded birthday cake tarts and lunchbox slices, as well as breakfast bakes.
“Boosted by these innovations, this has been Mr Kipling’s biggest ever year”, Whitehouse declared.
The FTSE 250 constituent reported profit before tax of £181.9m, a rise of almost 13 per cent, and better than expectations. Headline revenue was up 2.5 per cent to £1.175bn for the year to 28 March.
Full year headline branded revenue was up 3.4 per cent overall, having hit 4.7 per cent in the second half of the year, as the new products took off. They included the Fuel10k yoghurt and granola brand.
One of the City’s best-known analysts covering the sector, Clive Black at Shore Capital, said: “Premier has beaten out 2026 trading profit expectations due to balanced progress across the firm, innovation, UK [market] share gains …. And good M&A”.
The St Albans-based company employs 4,000 people across 13 sites in the UK. It also makes Bisto and the Homepride, Lloyd Grossman and Sharwood’s ranges of cooking sauces. In September, it bought the Merchant Gourmet ready meals brand.
Its two bakeries, in Stoke and Carlton, produce 220m packs of cakes and pies a year.
Premier’s shares warmed up, gaining almost 3 per cent to 203p, the stock’s highest since May last year.
Black added: “We see this highly successful proprietary branded British food manufacturer as being fundamentally undervalued”. He said 250p “would be a fairer base” for the stock.