Greencross Limited (ASX: GXL) released its 2018 financial results to the market today revealing a 7% increase in revenue.
Greencross is Australia’s largest pet company with a chain of vet clinics called Greencross and a retail chain called Petbarn.
Here are some of the highlights from its report:
- Revenue increased by 7% to $878.7 million
- Like for like sales growth of 4.9% (52 weeks comparison)
- EBITDA decreased by 25% to $74.8 million (click here to learn what EBITDA means)
- Reported profit fell by 51% to $20.7 million
- Dividend decreased by 18% to 15.5 cents per share
According to Bloomberg, analysts were expecting Greencross to report a profit of $34.3 million. A dividend of $0.17 was also expected. Excluding ‘exceptional’ items the Greencross underlying profit was $37.2 million, investors appear pleased with what the company announced.
CEO Simon Hickey said: “FY18 was a year of substantial change for Greencross. The strength of our business model is clearly evident from the excellent like-for-like sales growth that was delivered.”
Some of the exceptional items included $21.8 million of impairments and provisions and $2.4 million of acquisition & restructuring costs.
Greencross has been working on growing its private label sales, which now represents 23% of Australian retail product sales. Private label food sales grew by 25% in FY18 in Australia.
FY19 Outlook
In the first six weeks of FY19 group like-for-like (LFL) sales were up 5.8% and total revenue growth was 8%.
Shareholders will be hoping for a better year ahead with the Greencross share price down 31% in 2018, before today’s open.
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