Poundland sees profits dive but plans to add 60 new stores
Budget chain Poundland has reported a fall in statutory pre-tax profits of 19 per cent to £21.5m, thanks largely to costs associated with its recent IPO.
Underlying pre-tax profits rose a hefty 23 per cent to £36.8m.
The company, which had its IPO in March, enjoyed growth in like-for-like sales of 1.9 per cent and said it had added 70 net new stores for the year ended 30 March.
Furthermore, the company announced it plans to open 60 new stores in 2015. Poundland currently serves close to 5m customers each week, including over 200,000 in Ireland
Andrew Higginson, chairman of Poundland, said:
These results show that we are continuing to build on our strong growth record, as set out at the time of the IPO. I expect that Poundland will continue to benefit from its strong trading platform, its universal appeal and the structural change in consumers' shopping behaviour
On its first of trading, Poundland saw its shares jump by 17 per cent.
The company's initial public offering was priced significantly above its retail items of one pound, at 300p per share, toward the higher end of the range.
The price gave Europe's biggest single-price retailer a market capitalisation of £750m.
There had been strong interest in the company with Poundland shares subscribed 14 times over.