24th Feb 2015 08:33
LONDON (Alliance News) - Crawshaw Group PLC saw its shares rise early Tuesday after it said it would beat market expectations for its recently-ended financial year, helped by higher revenue and a better-than-expected improvement in cash margins as customers spent more on each shop.
The meat retailer said like-for-like sales were up 5% in the financial year that ended January 31, building on the 11% growth it reported in the previous year.
It had said last month that cash margins had also increased on the year, but said Tuesday that it now expects its results for the year to be "materially higher" than the current market forecast, despite investments it made in its growth plan. It said it would accelerate the investments in the current financial year, as planned.
"Our average spend continues to increase reflecting the excellent quality and value we offer. All our stores are profitable and we are excited about the planned shop openings in the near future plus the arrival of our new CEO in the next week," Chairman Richard Rose said in a statement.
Crawshaw announced in December that Lidl executive Noel Collett would become its new chief executive from March 1.
WH Ireland is forecasting that Crawshaw will report a pretax profit of GBP1.0 million for its last financial year to January 31, and earnings per share of 1.10 pence. The company reported a pretax profit of GBP1.0 million and EPS of 1.42p in the previous financial year.
Crawshaw shares were up 10.9% at 41.85 pence early Tuesday, making it one of the best-performins stocks on the AIM All-Share index.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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