The Po family’s restaurant group Shakey’s Pizza Asia Ventures Inc. (PIZZA) almost doubled its profits to P489 million during the first half of the year from P250 million in the same period of 2022 as Filipinos dined out more often to celebrate special occasions.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the firm said that, “given its first half performance and expectation for the balance of the year, PIZZA is upgrading its full year 2023 growth outlook to better than 30 percent for both top and bottomline.”

PIZZA was able to sustain its robust performance with system wide sales for the six-month period rose by 51 percent to P8.8 billion, as PIZZA continued its growth momentum from the first quarter of the year. 

The group also benefited from a 27 percent growth in same store sales growth (SSSG) with PIZZA’s full-service restaurant businesses reporting an SSSG of 20 percent. On a sequential basis, second quarter sales rose by 11 percent.

PIZZA President and CEO Vicente Gregorio attributed the group’s solid sales performance to the substantial rise in foot traffic driven by special celebrations such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and graduations. 

“With dine-in back to pre-pandemic levels, we saw an influx of celebrations across all our stores despite an inflationary environment. Supported by the wide scale of our full-service restaurants and kiosks network, our guest-centric approach of providing accessibility and enhanced brand value resonated well with our guests, leading to a robust, volume-led growth,” he added.

Gregorio noted that, “moreover, we’ve continued building new stores and outlets across our brands, leveraging the strength of our portfolio to reach more guests. We are pleased to share that these new stores and outlets are performing better than expected and proving to be accretive to the business.”

Apart from a healthy foot traffic, topline was fueled by the Group’s network expansion program. PIZZA opened 164 net new stores and outlets during the six-month period, 79 of which were launched in the second quarter of 2023.

PIZZA reported a 45 percent year-on-year jump in gross profit for the first half of 2023, driven by the group’s strong sales. This translated to a gross margin of 20.8 percent, which softened by 3.5 percentage points from last year, as anticipated, due to higher commodity prices. 

Nonetheless, with higher sales and active management of operating expenditures, PIZZA was able to cushion the impact on the bottomline. Net profit margins likewise expanded by 100 basis points to 7.1 percent, despite an elevated cost environment.

“PIZZA’s performance for the first half of the year underscores our unwavering pursuit of sustainable growth. We have spun a culture where guest-centricity, cost discipline, and operational efficiency are deeply ingrained in our people,” said Gregorio. 

He added that, “coupled with our diversified multi-brand portfolio, we are able to leverage our competitive advantage in full-service restaurants and benefit from productivity gains and synergies from our vertically-integrated operations more effectively.”

Among the key synergies is the group’s latest innovation leveraging the strong brand equity of its two leading brands, Shakey’s and Potato Corner.

“We have made investments in organic and inorganic opportunities, taking calculated risks while we navigated through turbulent years. Now that we are a more diversified food group, we plan to ride and maximize our growth momentum in the second half and beyond,” said Gregorio.