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JOLLIBEE
Foods Corp. (JFC) managed to post a 9.6 percent growth
in net profit for 2007 despite a 15.5-percent
contraction in net earnings in the fourth quarter on
higher cost of raw materials.
Profit
was helped by a 12.7-percent rise in revenues that
reached P38.67 billion last year versus P34.30 billion
in 2006.
“In the
Philippines, more people were eating out and… more often
in 2007 than in… previous years. This must be another
indication that the economy grew remarkably in 2007. Our
brands maintained and some even improved their market
shares in the fast growing industry despite the strong
challenges from competition,” said chairman and chief
executive Tony Tan Caktiong.
Meanwhile, chief finance officer Ysmael V. Baysa said
the fourth-quarter results were net of estimated
accounting adjustments of P115 million after tax and
various expense items such as the write-off of assets
from closed stores and the provision for the cost of
JFC’s stock options.
“Excluding these adjustments, the consolidated net
income for the 4th quarter would have been P665
million,” he explained. JFC’s revenues from October to
December 2007 rose 12.1 percent to P10.7 billion.
Prices
of raw materials, particularly milk, cheese, cooking oil
and flour rose sharply in the fourth quarter of 2007.
“Our
cost improvement efforts and our slight price
adjustments in November and December could not totally
offset the steep rise in [the price of raw materials].
We will continue to take these steps as part of our
efforts to try to recover our profit margins,” he said.
He cautioned that raw material prices continued to rise
in the first quarter of 2008 and are expected to
continue to go up in the second quarter.
The
Jollibee group opened a total of 173 stores in 2007; 151
in the Philippines and 22 abroad.
As of
end December, it was operating a total of 1,456 stores
in the country—Jollibee, 620; Chowking, 374;
Greenwich,
245; Red Ribbon, 189; Delifrance, 26; and Manong Pepe,
two.
All in
all, JFC has 1,635 stores. |
