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Crawshaw sales given boost by strong festive showing
Meat-focused retail store business Crawshaw Group saw continued, albeit slight, progress towards the group's strategy of strengthening its position as the UK's "leading value butcher" over the 15 week period leading to 24 December.
Group sales and gross margins both improved 0.6% on the previous year as Crawshaw's growing factory shop format helped offset the impact of lower footfall at its high street locations and the overall softer consumer sentiment.
The firm experienced a "strong core festive trade" that accounted for a quarter of group sales throughout the period in the week leading to Christmas day, reaching a record £1.8m with sales of almost 3,500 value hampers.
Crawshaw opened two new factory shop units throughout the period, hitting its goal of five new locations over the year.
The AIM-quoted firm said that a "softer consumer environment" had impacted progress seen on like-for-like sales, which declined 6.1% on a group level, which, coupled with additional cost inflation flowing through, Crawshaw expected to continue to act as a drag on the profitability of its high street shops.
Noel Collett, chief executive officer, said, "On balance, this was a solid core Christmas trading performance against what remains a very tough high street environment. Our biggest ever Christmas week and the record number of meat hampers sold clearly demonstrates the trust our customers place in us for their most important meat spend of the year. This gives us a solid platform to improve trading momentum going into 2018."
"We continue to focus on strengthening Crawshaws' position as the country's best value butcher. We are excited by the performance of our factory shops and by the progress of our 2Sisters supply agreement and, while there is much to do, we remain confident that this combination will be transformational for the long-term growth of the company," he added.
As of 1040 GMT, shares had dropped off 7.69% to 10.50p.