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THE
Philippines’ largest fast-food operator Jollibee Foods
Corp. (JFC) said it has opened a Jollibee restaurant in
China, six years after it ended the operation of a
franchised restaurant in Xiamen.
The
store—owned by Kuai Le Feng, a wholly owned unit of JFC—opened
Tuesday, the company said in a statement. The branch is
in Jia Ning Na Mall in Shenzhen City, China.
“This is
the first Jollibee store opened in China after several
years. Jollibee operated a franchised store in Xiamen
from 1998 to 2002,” JFC said.
JFC,
whose shares are traded on the Philippine Stock Exchange
(PSE), operates the country’s biggest food- service
network. It had a total of 1,385 stores in the
Philippines as of end-February, that include 625
Jollibee stores, 376 Chowking branches, 237 Greenwich
stores, 192 Red Ribbon stores, 27 Delifrance branches
and two Manong Pepe stores.
Abroad,
the company had 186 stores as of end-February, of which
102 are Yonghe King stores in
China;
one ChunShui Tang store in China; 14 Jollibee branches
in the US; 22 Red Ribbon stores in the US; 12 Chowking
stores in the US; nine Chowking stores in Dubai; five
Chowking outlets in Indonesia and 21 Jollibee branches
in other countries.
JFC
posted a net profit of P2.4 billion last year, up 9.6
percent from P2.2 billion a year earlier, despite a
15.5-percent contraction in net earnings in the fourth
quarter of 2007.
Growth
was fueled by a 12.7-percent rise in revenues, which
amounted to P38.67 billion at end-2007 versus P34.30
billion a year earlier.
“In the
Philippines, more people were eating out and eating out
more often in 2007 than in many 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, company chief finance officer Ysmael Baysa
said the lower fourth-quarter net income was net of
estimated accounting adjustments of P115 million after
tax consisting of various expense items, such as the
writeoff 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 fourth 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,
Baysa said.
“Our
cost-improvement efforts and our slight price
adjustments in November and December could not totally
offset the steep rise in raw materials prices. 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
going up in the second quarter. |
