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LONDON (Alliance News) - Majestic Wine PLC said Thursday it swung from a loss to a profit in its most recent financial year due to strong revenue growth in its Naked Wines business.
Majestic Wine has four key businesses: Majestic Retail, a wine retailer; Naked Wines, a crowdfunding wine service; Majestic Commercial, a specialist trade supplier; and Lay & Wheeler, which is a fine wine merchant.
For its financial year ended April 2, Majestic Wine recorded an GBP8.3 million pretax profit - a significant turnaround from its GBP1.5 million loss the year before.
Revenue across all four of Majestic Wine's businesses totalled GBP476.1 million, up 2.3% from GBP465.4 million. This growth was led by an 11% increase in Naked Wines revenue to GBP156.1 million from 144.3 million.
Majestic Wine acquired online retailer Naked Wines in 2015 and made Naked Wines' founder & chief executive officer, Rowan Gormley, its own chief executive.
Majestic Retail saw a 1.9% increase in revenue to GBP263.8 million from GBP262.2 million the year before. Lay & Wheeler's revenue contribution also grew slightly, reaching GBP13.0 million from GBP12.3 million despite a restructure.
Majestic Commercial, however, experienced a 5.4% drop in revenue to GBP43.4 million from GBP56.6 million the previous year.
The company intends to pay a final dividend of 5.2 pence, bringing the total annual dividend to 7.2p - up 41% from 5.1p the year before.
"In the short-term the UK market remains tough. However the board expect to achieve GBP500 million in sales by 2019 and continue to meet financial year 2019 market expectations," said Majestic Wine Chairman Greg Hodder.
Shares in Majestic Wine were up 1.9% at 458.70 pence on Thursday morning.
