LONDON (Alliance News) - Crawshaw Group PLC Tuesday said it swung to a loss in the first half of its financial year as it books costs related to new store openings and it continues to expand the business, but revenue grew and it said that trading so far in the second half is encouraging.
The fresh meat and food-to-go retailer said that it made a pretax loss of GBP100,000 in the six months to July 31, having made a GBP700,000 pretax profit the year before, due to costs related to new stores it is opening as part of its expansion plans.
Excluding these costs, its adjusted pretax profit was up 27% to GBP900,000.
During the half year, Crawshaw acquired Gabbotts Farm Ltd, which consists of 11 retail butchers shops and a factory shop attached to a small distribution centre in the north west of England. It said that trading so far is "extremely encouraging".
New store performance was also encouraging, Crawshaw said, noting that the Bolton and Worksop stores are both trading ahead of expectations with early indications that they will outperform its 'base case' profitability assumptions.
Meanwhile, revenue rose to GBP16.7 million from GBP11.8 million, boosted by initiatives launched by new management. Like-for-like sales improved to 3.5% growth in the second quarter from a 2.2% decline in the first quarter.
The first seven weeks of the second half saw like-for-like sales growth of 6.7%.
Crawshaw will pay an interim dividend of 0.1 pence, which is flat year-on-year.
Shares in Crawshaw were trading up 0.3% at 72.70 pence on Tuesday morning.
By Karolina Kaminska; karolinakaminska@alliancenews.com @KarolinaAllNews
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