Christmas brings sweet numbers for Hotel Chocolat
Premium chocolatier and retailer Hotel Chocolat Group announced its interim results for the 26 weeks to 25 December on Wednesday, with proforma revenue up 12% to £62.5m and reported revenue up 14% to £62.5m.
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The AIM-traded company said underlying EBITDA improved 27% to £13.7m, with its underlying EBITDA margin increasing to 21.9% from 19.7% year-on-year.
Profit before tax was up 28% to £11.2m.
Hotel Chocolat’s board said the firm retained a “strong” balance sheet with net cash at period end of £16.2m, compared to net debt of £1m in the prior period.
Earnings per share were 7.8p, improving from an adjusted 6.2p.
“This has been another period of good progress for Hotel Chocolat with strong growth in both sales and profitability,” said co-founder and chief executive officer Angus Thirlwell.
“The critical Christmas period was very successful, helped by good availability, popular and innovative new ranges and significantly increased digital transactions.”
Thirlwell said the business had “strong plans in place” for the key spring seasons of Mother's Day and Easter, and was confident of further progress.
“I would like to thank everyone in the HC team for continuing to work tirelessly to build the business and strengthen our brand.
“We continue to make good headway against our three key strategic objectives of opening more stores, improving our digital capability and increasing our production capacity.”