Revolution Bars Group plc, a leading UK operator of premium bars, trading under the Revolution and Revolución de Cuba brands, has announced its preliminary results for the year to 30 June 2015. Commenting on the results, Keith Edelman, Chairman, said:
“The future, in a highly competitive and changing market, is an exciting one and one in which the Board and management are highly alert to the challenges created. Our performance in 2015 has given us a solid platform and our current pipeline of new bars gives us the confidence that we can grow the footprint of the Group. With a clear strategy and our depth of management experience, we remain confident that the business is well positioned for future growth and we expect to make continued progress in 2016.”
Douglas Jack of Numis commented:
“RBG’s maiden results beat EBITDA expectations, despite the cost of extra investment to drive future growth. The site pipeline has grown since listing, and additional new sites should drive operational gearing benefits. The company is debt and pension-deficit free, and our forecasts anticipate almost 50% self-financed PBT growth over the three next years. Given this, the valuation is far too low, in our view.”
Highlights
- Listing on the London Stock Exchange in March 2015
- Revenue of £111.8m (2014: £108.7m), an increase of 2.9%
- Positive like-for-like sales of +3.0%
- Gross margin improved by 60 bps; EBITDA margin improved by 100 bps
- Record profits, as measured by adjusted EBITDA, of £14.6m
- Profit before tax of £2.9m (2014: £2.6m), adjusted profit before tax of £8.3m (2014: £7.4m), an increase of 12%
- Five new sites planned for the year to 30 June 2016, of which three will open in H1
- EPS of 4.6p ; dividend of 1.7 pence per share
- Debt-free at 30 June 2015
Income statement summary
2015£m | 2014£m | |
Revenue | 111.8 | 108.7 |
Gross profit | 84.6 | 81.6 |
Gross margin % | 75.7% | 75.1% |
Operating expenses | (76.2) | (74.1) |
Adjusted operating profit | 8.4 | 7.5 |
Adjusted operating profit % | 7.5% | 6.9% |
Adjusted EBITDA | 14.6 | 13.2 |
Adjusted EBITDA % | 13.1% | 12.1% |
CEO’s Statement from Mark McQuater
The Statement ranged across strategy, sites and customers with the comments on Digital marketing, and Estate expansion of particular interest:
Digital marketing
“The Group is one of the leaders in the sector at communicating and marketing to customers. We have a strong and growing presence on social media with 550,000 Facebook friends and around one million live email and mobile contacts on our database. This substantial digital presence matches the user habits of our core customer group.
Estate expansion
“The listing of our Company has assisted us greatly in the property market and I am delighted that we already have five planned openings for next year. Three of these will be open prior to our key Christmas trading period. We are reviewing many opportunities and assessing all potential new sites against our rigorous and proven investment criteria. We will only proceed on those units that meet our challenging return on capital criteria.
“We are planning to open five new outlets in our financial year ending 30 June 2016. We will open Revolución de Cuba venues in Milton Keynes, Leeds and Nottingham before Christmas.”