Majestic Wine saw its full-year figures boosted by the festive period, announcing a 15.3 percent rise group sales in its biggest Christmas ever.
On an underlying basis group sales saw a 12.4 percent increase, with like-for-like sales up 7.5 percent on the previous Christmas period. The festive period is the wine trader’s most important time of the year, during which it delivers around 30 percent of its total annual sales.
Majestic Wine added that approximately 0.5 percent of the growth was one-off, due to transfer of sales from closed stores.
The group’s gross margin percentage was around 1 percentage point lower than the previous Christmas period “due to a combination of accelerated acquisition of new customers and the need to remain competitive in a heavily discounted UK market still coming to terms with recent currency movements.” Rowan Gormley, Majestic’s chief executive, commented:
“Delivering strong like for likes in a tough market is a tribute to the hard work that our people put in – right across the business. It is also particularly pleasing that both Naked Wines and Majestic Commercial traded in line with expectations and Lay & Wheeler has maintained its strong growth.
“Our transformation plan is working and we remain on track to achieve our GBP500m sales goal. We said that we would be better prepared for Christmas than ever – and the numbers show that we did what we said we would do.
“At this stage we are not predicting a change to long term margin expectations, but we need to retain flexibility to compete in a competitive market. Our business is about people and I must say a massive thank you to our teams across the world for their dedication over the peak trading period – they have made me very proud.”
Majestic Wine is a leading wine specialist in the UK, who also fund independent winemakers through their Naked Wines as well as owning the Lay & Wheeler brand.
Majestic (LON:WINE) shares are currently up 4.71 percent at 339.25 (0935GMT).