DP Poland sees Domino's sales bounce back from lockdown

The AIM-traded firm, which holds the master franchise to the US-based Domino’s Pizza brand in Poland, said the Covid-19 pandemic had “relatively little” impact on its business in comparison to its industry peers, as it was able to keep all of its stores open, and its two commissaries operating without interruption.

As it had previously reported, from 14 March the Polish government imposed lockdown restrictions across the country.

As a result, like-for-like system sales and overall system sales were down 14% and 10% respectively for the month of March.

However, DP Poland said performance recovered in the following months, with like-for-like system sales up 3% and system sales ahead 6% in each of the months of April and May.

A positive impact of Covid-19 had been a reduction in the company’s food and labour costs, and in some of its rent costs.

In addition, the firm said the recruitment market had improved in terms of both availability of staff and labour costs.

However, DP Poland said it also incurred some additional costs, primarily in connection with safety and cleaning across its operations, to meet the requirements necessitated by Covid-19 regulations.

The company said its interactions with the food aggregators, Just Eat Takeaway subsidiary Pyszne.pl and its new partner Glovo, had been positive.

Its directors also noted that, as reported by Bloomberg, Poland’s economy was expected to be the most resilient to the pandemic crisis within the European Union.

According to EU forecasts, GDP in the country would shrink by 4.3% in 2020, which would be the smallest expected drop among all EU countries.

“These unprecedented times continue to pose an uncertain trading backdrop,” said chief executive officer Iwona Olbryś.

“As such, we remain unable to provide any guidance for the full year.

“However, while the Covid-19 crisis presents our industry in Poland with some major obstacles, I believe that we are in a relatively good position, given in particular our focus on delivery and online channels.”

At 0832 BST, shares in DP Poland were down 2.63% at 7.4p.