Yummy Town Holdings Corp (雅茗天地集團), which operates restaurant and tea brands worldwide, expects profits to climb this year, as it plans to open new stores, renovate existing outlets and seek cooperation with other companies.
“Our goals for this year include opening between 300 and 350 new stores, mainly Happy Lemon (快樂檸檬) bubble tea stores in China,” a company official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
The stores would be operated by franchisees and are to have higher margins than regular chain stores, said the official, who declined to be identified.
The company in the fourth quarter of last year closed some Chinese chain stores that reported low single-store sales, as competition in the region became fiercer and the economy as a whole remained sluggish, the official said.
As of March, the company had 929 stores in China, along with 89 outlets in other countries, such as the US and the Philippines, company data showed.
In the first five months of this year, Yummy’s cumulative revenue climbed 4.17 percent to NT$920.98 million (US$29.23 million), compared with NT$884.09 million a year earlier, thanks to the launches of new stores.
The company said that it plans to renovate about 30 percent of its existing stores this year and adjust ingredient suppliers for better quality, as well as cooperate with food delivery and other companies to increase sales and earnings.
Yummy reported that net income in the first quarter rose 29.43 percent year-on-year to NT$44.59 million, or earnings per share of NT$1.32, the highest level in six quarters.
At the company’s annual general meeting yesterday, shareholders approved the distribution of a cash dividend of NT$3 per share, a payout ratio of 96.46 percent based on last year’s earnings per share of NT$3.11 and a dividend yield of 4.14 percent based on the stock’s closing price of NT$72.4 in Taipei trading yesterday.
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