Domino’s Pizza Group, the leading pizza delivery company, has released its Interim Management Statement covering the 13 week period to 28 September 2014, with David Wild, Chief Executive Officer, commenting:
“We are delighted with the like-for-like performance in our core UK business and remain on track for our targeted new store opening programme. We are building on our success on-line with the roll-out of our new website and a series of enhancements to continue to make it easy for our customers to order Domino’s.
“Progress in Germany is slower than we would have liked, but we are committed to the execution of our strategy. Our performance in Switzerland is encouraging.
“We face more challenging comparatives for the final quarter, but we remain confident of a satisfactory outcome for the year and are planning to build on this success in 2015.”
UK
UK performance since the half year has been strong, with the fourth successive quarter of double-digit like-for-like sales growth. This has been achieved through improved economic conditions, continued emphasis on meal deal promotions and migration by customers to on-line ordering where ticket remains higher.
In the period, orders representing 70.9% of delivered sales were placed on-line (2013: 62.4%). Of these, participation of mobile devices was 49.3% (2013: 33.8%), reflecting the increased popularity of both our website and App.
During the period we opened 13 new stores in the UK, bringing the year-to-date total to 21. In line with the usual second half weighting, we are on target to open 40-50 stores by the end of 2014.
International
Helped by the continued economic recovery, especially in Dublin, ROI had its best quarter of the year so far. Recently launched “Pan Pizza” into this market and continue to grow market share.
The transformation of the business in Germany is continuing, with reductions in delivery areas and local marketing spend, and a focus on pizza quality and operational effectiveness. As indicated at the half year, several underperforming stores have been mothballed. At the end of the quarter there were 11 corporate and 11 franchised outlets.
Switzerland had an excellent quarter, reflecting the benefits of the store refurbishment and relocation programme. Recently strengthened the management and are confident of moving into profitability during the next quarter.