Britain’s Greggs Raises Profit Outlook After Trading Recovers

The group, best known for its sausage rolls, steak bakes and vegan snacks, said like-for-like sales in the eight weeks to May 8 were down 3.9% versus the same period two years ago, having been down 23.3% in the 10 weeks to March 13.

That gave a figure of down 13.5% for the 18 weeks to May 8.

Greggs has also rolled-out its delivery service to 800 shops, with sales from this channel representing 8.2% of company-managed shop sales in the most recent eight week period.

“Given our recent trading performance, the board now believes that profits are likely to be materially higher than its previous expectation, and could be around 2019 levels in the absence of further restrictions,” it said.

Greggs made a record pretax profit of 108.3 million pounds ($152.2 million) in 2019 before slumping to a 13.7 million pound loss in 2020.

($1 = 0.7115 pounds)

(Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle and Sarah Young)