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NOW you
know times are really hard. The iconic fast food that
offers “distinctly Filipino” spaghetti and fried chicken
has been bitten by the inflation bug.
Jollibee
Foods Corp., the country’s largest fastfood operator,
would be hiking prices “any time soon,” chief executive
Tony Tan Caktiong told the BusinessMirror.
However,
Tan Caktiong said he doesn’t expect such increase to
impact sales.
Jollibee’s total 2007 system-wide sales, a measure of
all sales to consumers both from company-owned and
franchised stores (619 in all nationwide), grew by 14.4
percent to P51.6 billion.
“No, it
[sales] wouldn’t be [affected] since the upper eat-out
market segment would go to fast food and fill up the
loss of the bottom segment,” Caktiong said Monday
evening, replying to a question on the price hike’s
impact on sales.
The
price increase would be across all products by its five
quick-service restaurants.
“Each
store would have their own schedule,” he added, without
citing exact estimates of how high the fast-food
operator would price the products. He said the price
increase can occur before the opening of classes in
June.
Tan
Caktiong explained that despite holding off on price
increases, “the cost pressures on raw materials, fuel
and operations are real.”
Jollibee’s cost of sales last year increased by 12.26
percent to P14.57 billion from nearly P13 billion in
2006, the publicly-listed firm’s annual report says.
According to monetary officials, average headline
inflation in the Philippines continued to spike, rising
5.6 percent in the first quarter of this year from 3.3
percent in the previous quarter.
“Similarly, core inflation, an indicator of the
long-term trend of inflation, increased during the
review quarter to 4.1 percent from 2.4 percent in the
previous quarter.”
The
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas cited higher international
prices of oil and non-oil commodity products as the
source of rising inflation pressures. On the other hand,
higher food prices, particularly of rice, continued to
drive the trend of headline inflation.
Jollibee,
to note, was one of several companies that bid for rice
from Thailand and China.
Tan
Caktiong said he believes the company would hike prices
earlier than competitors. However, he couldn’t say if
such move would be the first and only instance that the
fastfood giant would opt for this year.
The
company was one of the actively-traded stocks on
Tuesday, contributing 1.28 percent of 20 stocks at
P45.50, with a volume of a million shares valued at
P48.61 million. |
