Pepco Groups posts strong H1 as profits surge 28%

Pepco Group has hailed a strong first half of the year after its underlying profit before tax surged 28.5% to €144m (£123m).

The performance comes after it also saw its revenues increase 18.9% to €2.37bn (£1.9bn) during the six month period ending 31 March. On a like-for-like basis sales also increased by 5.3%, buoyed by a 12.3% increase during the second quarter.

In addition it posted underlying EBITDA on an IFRS16 basis of €347m, (£296.9m) up 7.3% YoY.

The group also experienced record H1 new store openings with 235 net new stores opened during the period – excluding the closure of 43 Fultons stores.

Trevor Masters, CEO Pepco Group, said: “We are proud of the Group’s performance in the first half of this year and the strategic progress made across the business. Despite a challenging macro environment, we accelerated our strategy, including our store opening programme, which remains the key driver of value creation for the business.

“As pandemic restrictions progressively eased, it was also encouraging to see the strong return of customers and the continuation of this into Q3 resulted in the Group’s like-for-like sales rising above pre-Covid levels for the comparable period three years ago.”

He added: “We have emerged a stronger, more resilient operator from this unprecedented recent period by being a bigger Group through accelerating our store openings, a better retailer through store and proposition renewal, and a simpler business through scale-led cost reductions.

“We have maintained our market leading position on prices and through our continued focus on reducing the cost of doing business, we have been able to shield customers from price rises on some of our products at a time of significant inflationary pressure on household budgets.”