|
By Darwin G. Amojelar Reporter
JOLLIBEE Foods Corp. (JFC) on
Friday
announced that its net income fell by a
tenth in the first quarter of the year on costlier raw
materials.
The country’s largest fast-food chain said in a statement that
profits dropped by 9.4 percent to P480 million from a year ago.
“The high cost of raw materials
continued to exert pressure on our gross profit margin. The company
made slight price adjustments on its products and [pursued] cost
improvement[s], but these were not sufficient to totally offset the
increase in costs,” JFC said.
The fast-food giant added that
the rapid increase in the cost of raw materials reduced the
group’s profit margin from 6.1 percent last year to 4.8 percent in
the first quarter this year.
The company’s cost of sales
increased faster than revenues by 19.5 percent to P4.9 billion.
Tony Tan Caktiong, JFC chairman
and chief executive, had said that the fast-food giant may raise
prices anew to cope with soaring raw material costs.
The popular fast-food company has
been raising prices in small increments of about P1 to P2 in some
products like burger, pasta and rice meals, starting last month.
The group’s consolidated
revenues reached P10 billion, 14.8 percent higher than the same
period last year.
System-wide sales, a measure of
all sales to consumers from both company-owned and franchised
stores, rose 13.2 percent in the first quarter this year.
Sales from the group’s
restaurant chains in the country grew by 13.7 percent while those in
foreign sites went up by 9.8 percent—the net effect of the
appreciation of the peso. Excluding the impact of exchange rate
changes, sales from the group’s restaurants abroad grew by 18.6
percent.
“The increase in revenues and
system-wide sales was driven by our existing base of stores and new
store additions,” the company said.
JFC had spent P365.2 million in
capital expenditures during the quarter as the group opened 18
company-owned stores in the Philippines and abroad.
The group opened 32 stores
worldwide in the first quarter, including eight Jollibee, four
Chowking and Red Ribbon, and two Delifrance stores in the
Philippines. Abroad, it opened eight Yonghe King stores in China and
six in other parts of the world.
At end-December, JFC operated
about 1,456 stores in the Philippines, 620 of which were Jollibee
stores, 374 Chowking, 245 Greenwich, 189 Red Ribbon, 26 Delifrance
and two Manong Pepe outlets.
Stores abroad reached 179 with 99
Yonghe King stores in mainland China, 14 Jollibee, 20 Red Ribbon and
12 Chowking stores in the US, nine Chowking stores in Dubai, and
another five in Indonesia.
|
