Pizza powers ahead in recession

Published on Saturday 26 September 2009 16:17

FIZZY drinks and takeaway pizza will be on the menu this week as Irn-Bru maker AG Barr and Domino's Pizza update the market on their progress.

Barr, which posts interim results on Tuesday, is set to be a beneficiary from the hot start to the summer, which boosted demand for fizzy drinks.

The Cumbernauld-based company, which also benefited from comparisons with the rain of the previous year, lifted like-for-like sales by 7.9 per cent between 1 February and 29 May.

Including sales of exotic fruit drink brand Rubicon, which it bought last year, sales were up by 22.5 per cent.

While the fine weather tailed off as the summer wore on, Barr should also have been helped by higher prices, increased trading volumes and recent investment in its core brands, which include Strathmore water, St Clements juices and fizzy drink Tizer.

Scotland's "other national drink" may well be one of the most popular tipples used to wash down takeaways from Domino's Pizza, which delivers a trading update on Thursday.

Domino's has been one of the clear winners in the recession and the update should continue the positive trend.

Pre-tax profits rose by 25 per cent to 13.6 million at the half-year stage as consumers swapped restaurants for takeaways and said it was likely to beat market hopes for the year as a whole.

Domino's, which has 576 franchise-run stores in the UK and Ireland, was also buoyed by its sponsorship of ITV hit Britain's Got Talent, featuring Scots singing sensation Susan Boyle. She helped the final become the most-watched programme on television this year and is now storming the charts in the United States.

Hotter weather earlier in the summer slowed like-for-like sales growth, but canny short-term pizza deals have none the less helped the business, which plans to have 1,000 stores by 2017.

Viewers munching their pizza and slurping their Irn-Bru may well have tuned into a programme made by Shed Media, which reports its interim results on Tuesday.

In July, the maker of Who Do You Think You Are?, Hope Springs and Waterloo Road revealed that some of its board directors had held preliminary talks with private equity groups over possible plans to de-list from Aim.

While investors await an update on the possible takeover, analysts will be watching the revenue figure for Shed's intellectual property.

In a pre-close statement in July, Shed warned that IP revenue would be weaker following a strong performance in the first half of the previous financial year.