Majestic Wine reported mixed results on Thursday, sliding into a loss for the six months to September 26th but seeing shares rise over 6 percent after the announcement.
The wine sellers reported a pre-tax loss of £4.4 million, a significant fall from the £4.3 million profit made in the first half of 2016.
However, sales rose 13.2 percent to £205.6 million and the company reiterated their goal to hit £500 million annual sales by the end of the 2019 financial year.
Majestic Retail sales rose 5.7 percent like for like for the 6th consecutive quarter, with their Naked Wines brand seeing a 26.7 percent sales increase.
Majestic Wine also confirmed that their transformation plan to deliver ‘future sustained growth in shareholder value’ remained on track.
Rowan Gormley, Group Chief Executive, commented:
“Our plan is working. We said that we would deliver sustainable growth, not by opening more stores, but by investing in better customer service and better customer retention. Both of these are working – sales are up over 10 percent and the projects driving that sales growth, like nationwide next day delivery, are on time and on budget.
“Now that we have built a solid platform for future growth, future cost growth will be much lower. We are reiterating our commitment to hitting our goal of delivering £500m sales by 2019, and we believe that will translate into healthy profit growth now that the step change in investment is complete. We are reinstating the dividend as a signal of our continued confidence in the plan.”
Majestic Wine (LON:WINE) shares are currently trading up 6.05 percent at 319.50 pence per share (0931GMT).
17/11/2016
