By Emily Hawkins
Greggs has said it is on track for 150 net new stores this year as its value-proposition protects it from a wider consumer down-turn.
In a fourth quarter trading update, the sausage-roll seller said its sales stood at £1.5bn, as the firm bounced back after experiencing pandemic-related disruption last Christmas.
Sales had surged 23 per cent versus the equivalent period in 2021, when trading was hampered by Brits staying at home amid the Omicron Covid-19 variant last year, the company said in a statement this morning.
A positive reaction to the business’s festive menu offering – including its Festive Bake and Salted Caramel Lattes – had helped full year like-for-like sales jump 17.8 per cent in company-managed shops.
The London-listed retailer said it had opened 186 new shops in the year just gone, with 39 closures meaning it had 2,328 shops trading at the end of 2022.
The baked-goods maker ended 2022 with a cash position of £191m, describing its pipeline of new shop opportunities as remaining “strong.”
Greggs is keen to extend its later-day trading offering, with 21.5 per cent of shops having now extended opening hours until 8pm.
While the retailer is grappling against a dire macroeconomic background, analysts said Greggs’ cheap-eats placed it in a good position to do well over the next year.
“Greggs has proven that its value-for-money proposition is the ingredient required to thrive,” Russell Pointon, director of consumer at Edison Group, said.
The business “has a lot going in its favour because it exists at the end of the value spectrum, and the group is capitalising on this,” Sophie Lund-Yates, lead equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown said.
She added: “However, it will be crucial to closely monitor how out-of-home spending shapes up, because any worse-than-expected drop offs would be bad news for profits when combined with soaring costs.”
The retailer’s share price jumped by just under one per cent in early trading on Thursday morning, after its shares have dipped 27 per cent over the past year.
The post Greggs: Baker on a sausage roll as it plots further expansion across UK appeared first on CityAM.
