22 September 2008
AGM Statement
At today’s Annual General Meeting of The Clapham House Group PLC, the owner and developer of leading restaurant brands, the following statement will be made by David Page, the Company’s Chairman:
Your Board is pleased to report that trading has continued to be satisfactory in the second quarter of our financial year. Today we operate from 82 locations: 53 Gourmet Burger Kitchen (“GBK”) restaurants (45 in the UK and 8 under franchise internationally), 23 Tootsies / Dexters restaurants and 6 The Real Greek (“TRG”) restaurants.
Over the last three months, a number of marketing initiatives have been introduced. Sales at our GBK restaurants have responded particularly well; sales at Tootsies have been satisfactory with the impact of the poor summer weather on the 23% of covers outside mitigated by an improved performance at several of the shopping centre restaurants; TRG’s central London locations have traded well.
We believe that recent trading in the current economic climate confirms that the positioning and price point of our brands remains very attractive to a wide range of customers, offering high quality products but at affordable prices.
In addition to executing ongoing marketing campaigns across the portfolio, we have intensified the management of our supply chain and have revisited all arrangements with a view to achieving increased efficiency and scale savings whilst protecting the quality of our products. We monitor all costs extremely carefully on a continual basis.
In line with our stated opening programme, we have added two new GBKs in the current financial year, one of which is in London’s Old Spitalfields Market. We are currently building four GBK restaurants to open in the second half of the year in Liverpool, Cardiff, Bristol, and White City. We are also building two TRGs at Old Spitalfields Market and White City. Contracts have also been exchanged on two further properties.
Our franchise partner has opened two new GBK restaurants in Dublin, both of which have performed very well in their first few months of trading. We expect at least two further GBK international openings under franchise in the second half of the year.
In July, we successfully disposed of The Bombay Bicycle Club for £4.4m in order to focus resources on our pure restaurant businesses and strengthen our balance sheet. Consequent to this, Clapham House’s net debt currently stands at £12.1m. The Company’s debt facilities are £21.7m.
Similarly, we anticipated the current market conditions in December last year and took the requisite actions on a timely basis to refine our expansion strategy. Whilst we are understandably cautious on the UK economic outlook and its impact on consumer spending, we are confident that Clapham House is well positioned with an appropriate and sensible growth plan for the current market conditions.
We remain highly positive about the mid term market prospects for our formats and the UK eating out market.