JFC’s Q2 net loss at P10.2B

Jollibee store crew

Homegrown fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) suffered worse financial bleeding in the second quarter as its businesses across the globe felt the full brunt of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the consequent lockdown measures.

JFC incurred a second quarter attributable net loss of P10.17 billion, a reversal of the net profit of P1.04 billion in the same period last year. This brought the January to June net loss to P11.96 billion versus a net profit of P2.5 billion in the same period last year.

“The business results were very bad but in line with our forecasts. We are now focusing on rebuilding our business moving forward along with implementing major cost improvement under our business transformation program,” JFC president Ernesto Tanmantiong said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

“We expect sales and profit to increase significantly in 2021 to a point closer to the levels of 2019 and grow at least at historical growth rate of 15 percent annually by 2022,” he added.

JFC expects its financial performance to get progressively better in the next two quarters as more stores would have reopened. It expects its cash flow to turn positive by the fourth quarter of 2020, with the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Europe, Middle East and other parts of Asia projected to generated net operating income, assuming that government restrictions related to COVID-19 control will not be re-imposed.

System-wide sales plummeted by 48.4 percent to P30.58 billion in the second quarter. For the six-month period, sales went down by 24.5 percent to P85.83 billion.

At the beginning of the second quarter, 50 percent of JFC’s stores worldwide were temporarily closed. By end-June, 88 percent of the stores have reopened but most of these stores relied heavily on delivery and take-out businesses while dine-in operations were either closed or had low level of sales volume.

Weak sales led to a 46.6 percent year-on-year drop in second quarter revenues to P23.33 billion while six-month revenues tumbled by 25.3 percent to P62.76 billion.

“We expect sales and profit to improve over the next few months. Our business-building effort includes introducing exciting new products, launching new marketing campaigns, opening cloud kitchens, introducing improvement in our delivery systems and opening new stores at selected locations particularly in North America, Vietnam, Malaysia and China,” Tanmantiong said.