Briscoe lifts third-quarter sales 7.1%, expects to increase annual profit again

Friday 30th October 2015

Briscoe Group, whose hostile takeover of Kathmandu Holdings was spurned earlier this year, lifted third-quarter sales 7.1 percent, with bigger gains in its sporting goods stores, and anticipates increasing annual profit for a seventh year in a row.

Sales rose to $115.9 million in the 13 weeks ended Oct. 25 from $108.2 million a year earlier, the Auckland based company said in a statement. Of that, homeware sales increased 4.6 percent to $73.7 million, while sporting goods revenue gained 12 percent to $37.7 million. Briscoe opened three Rebel Sport stores over the past year, and one Briscoes Homeware store, and on a same-store basis, sales were up 5.5 percent.

The retailer said it expects annual profit will beat last year's earnings of $39.3 million, which would be Briscoe's seventh consecutive annual increase.

"We are very pleased that the group's strong growth in sales and margin delivered in the first half of the year continued into this third quarter," managing director Rod Duke said. "Like other retailers we are mindful of the need to protect gross profit margin for the rest of this year, and certainly into 2016 as importers' margins are impacted by a weaker New Zealand dollar and as foreign exchange cover taken at higher levels matures."

The last time Briscoe reported a decline in annual earnings was during the most recent domestic recession and the depths of the global financial crisis in the 2009 financial year, a period when the kiwi dollar sank to about 50 US cents as investors flocked to the relative safety of the greenback.

Last month, Briscoe ended an unsuccessful takeover bid for Kathmandu. It had offered the outdoor equipment chain's shareholders five Briscoe shares for every nine Kathmandu shares as well as 20 cents per share, in a bid to buy the remaining 80.1 percent of the stock it doesn't already own.

Briscoe shares rose 0.7 percent to $2.82, and have dropped 5.7 percent this year.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet