30th Sep 2014 11:36
LONDON (Alliance News) - Eclectic Bar Group PLC Tuesday posted an increase in revenue for its last financial year as it continues to expand its site portfolio, but said it swung to a loss in the year, hit by costs associated with its IPO and new bar openings.
The UK bar operator, and owner of bars Lola Lo and Po Na Na, posted a pretax loss of GBP510,000 in the year ended June 29, compared with a pretax profit of GBP364,000 the prior year, after it said this year's results were hit by an extra GBP1.2 million in operating expenses.
Excluding those costs, and including discontinued operations, the company said its pretax profit rose 10% to GBP1.0 million, up on last year's GBP949,000 profit.
Revenue in the period from its continuing operations increased by almost 12% to GBP23.0 million, up from GBP20.6 million a year earlier, boosted by new site acquisitions and developments. Total revenue including discontinued operations was up 10% at GBP23.3 million.
"The group will continue to drive sales through acquisition and development, together with a strong focus over the coming year to further increase food sales where the opportunity arises. The group continues to acquire and develop new sites, and we believe the key to this success is to focus on the best locations, good rent cover, and the right concept for the customer and location," the company said.
Eclectic Bar owns a number of bars all focused on the premium bar market and "sophisticated professionals and students".
Since the year end, the group has signed leases for two new sites in Sheffield and Liverpool, and undertook a major investment in refurbishing and reconfiguring its bar Embargo, renaming it Embargo Republica.
Eclectic said it continues to consider single site and asset-group acquisitions and currently has a good pipeline of site acquisitions. The company said it intends to pay a special dividend in the current financial year of 2.5 pence per share.
Shares in Eclectic Bar were trading 0.5% higher Tuesday early afternoon, at 189.50 pence.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
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