‘Chickenjoyless’ Jollibee still posts growth in retail sales

Homegrown fastfood giant Jollibee Foods Corp. reported that its first semester net profit grew by 17.2 percent year-on-year to P2.5 billion as the opening of new shares and growth in existing network boosted retail sales by a double-digit pace.

Despite the disruption in the supply of JFC’s popular product “chickenjoy” that led to the closure of some of its stores, the company expects to replicate this second semester the system-wide retail sales growth of 14.3 percent seen in the first half of the year.

“We are sorry for the disappointment and inconvenience caused by … the temporary closure of some of our stores. We are doing our best to restore the availability of our products in our stores as soon as possible,” said JFC chief executive officer Ernesto Tanmantiong. “We have taken immediate measures to augment our delivery capability to our stores. We have also engaged international experts and invested in additional resources to fix the systems upgrade problem at the soonest time possible. We look forward to a sustained growth of the business.”

In the second quarter alone, JFC’s net profit rose by 14.8 percent year-on-year to P1.4 billion. This was on the back of a 14.1-percent year-on-year growth in system-wide retail sales to P29.75 billion. Growth was driven by a 6-percent increase in store network and 8-percent same-store sales growth.

Same-store sales growth pertains to restaurants that are already open for at least a year. It excludes sales growth from newly opened stores. JFC opened a total of 108 new stores in the first half: 84 in the Philippines and 24 abroad, bringing its total network to 2,833 globally (of which 2,244 are onshore).

The Philippine business posted a 14.8-percent growth in sales in the second quarter while its offshore businesses grew by 11.5 percent. Its business in the United States grew by 15.3 percent. In Southeast Asia and the Middle East, it rose by 26.5 percent. In China, it was up by 6 percent.

A migration to a new system that started in August caused a temporary slowdown in sales order taking, product loading and dispatch of transportation. As a result, JFC was not able to serve 6 percent of its normal nationwide sales in the first seven days of August.

But JFC reported that sales continued to grow in the Philippines, noting a same-store sales growth of 4 percent in the first seven days of August over that of the same period last year.