Jollibee income climbs 32% on strong sales

MANILA, Philippines - Strong sales in existing stores and new branches globally boosted the profits of fastfood giant Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) in the second quarter.

More product offerings and continuous expansion will allow the country’s largest fastfood chain to continue its global growth, its top executive said.

In a disclosure, JFC said its net income climbed 32.4 percent to P1.21 billion from P915 million a year ago.

Systemwide sales, a measure of all sales to customers both in company-owned and franchised stores, jumped 13.6 percent to P26.06 billion from P22.94 billion last year on the back of global store expansion and worldwide same-store sales growth.

The Philippine business posted a 12.6-percent growth in systemwide sales while the foreign business picked up 17.5 percent. Specifically, China grew 18.3 percent, Southeast Asia and the Middle East jumped 34.8 percent and US improved 6.3 percent, JFC said.

“Our new products, improvement of existing products and consistency of our service quality while maintaining stable prices have increased the value of our products and services to our customers,” said JFC chairman Tony Tan Caktiong.

“These drove strong same-store sales growth in all our brands in the Philippines,” Tan Caktiong added. The same store sales growth take into consideration restaurant outlets that were at least 15 months old.

The latest figures allowed JFC to enjoy a 32.7-percent surge in its net income to P2.1 billion in the first half from P1.58 billion last year.

First semester systemwide sales rose 12.1 percent to P49.9 billion from P44.5 billion a year ago.

“We look forward to creating even better products, better quality of services with even greater value to our customers in the future, to be made possible by an even stronger organization,” Tan Caktiong said.

“We look forward to a higher pace of new store opening in the second half of the year,” said JFC chief finance officer Ysmael Baysa.

For this year, JFC committed to spend P5.5 billion to put up 300 new stores across all its brands here and abroad like in Indonesia and China. The company is banking on higher consumer spending, new stores and election spending to grow its sales anew this year.

In its stockholders’ meeting yesterday, JFC doubled its special dividend to P2 per share, which will be distributed to shareholders in October.

“The significant increase in our cash dividends reflects the healthy cash flow of the business,” Baysa said.