Domino's Q1 sales grow
The pizza chain announced strong first quarter results in Australia, NZ, and Europe, and upgraded its Full Year 2016 Guidance to 25% growth over 2015, from the initial forecast of 20%.
Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Limited Group CEO and Managing Director Don Meij credited the strong start to the year to the roll-out of a number of significant tech-convenient projects aimed at improving the customer’s ordering experience.
“The strong positive momentum we are experiencing in Australia and New Zealand is largely attributed to the implementation of the GPS Driver Tracker technology over the past couple of months which allows customers to track their order from the store to the door.”
Australia, New Zealand and Europe were the standouts with strong same store sales of 13.9% achieved in ANZ, while Europe achieved 7.7%.
Japan is currently performing in line with management expectations, achieving 0.7% SSS growth in the first 18 weeks of trading, with the company's expectations remaining unchanged between 1-2% for the full year.
“As a result of the above expectation first quarter results and favourable foreign exchange translation benefits, we are upgrading ANZ SSS from 6-8% to 9-11% for the full year and from 4-6% to 6-8% SSS for the full year in Europe,” Meij said.
Domino’s also revised its guidance for new store openings in FY16 to between 260 and 280 stores (including the Pizza Sprint stores) across the Group, up from its previous guidance range of 180 to 200 stores.
“While we remain cautious with eight months of trading ahead, we are confident about continuing the same strong momentum and as such, have upgraded guidance to reflect this.”
Recently Domino’s announced plans to deliver over 40 new digital projects across the Group in FY16.
“We have been extremely busy working on and delivering key digital projects to market. Some are significant pieces of technology set to revolutionise the QSR space, others are focused on creating operational efficiencies in the business, but all of them have the end goal to improve the customer’s ordering experience,” Meij said.
“Just some of these innovations include rolling out high-tech, energy efficient, smart ovens to reduce waiting times, 15 and 20 minute service guarantees, faster save payment preferences, iPad multi-tasking technology, further enhancements to GPS Driver Tracker and Pizza Mogul, as well as continual advancements and improvements to our customer ordering apps. At the end of the day we know people come to us for great pizza. It’s for this reason that product innovation, as well as aggressive store growth and development remain at the core of our strategy."
“We are focused on staying ahead of our competitors and innovating globally. We have seen this through the introduction of the innovative ordering system via ‘Line’, an app and social network similar to WhatsApp, which is one of the most popular social networks in Japan. We also plan to roll-out GPS Driver Tracker in the last quarter of FY16.”
Meij said that Domino’s aims to reinvigorate the image and look of the stores so they are high quality outlets customers want to visit.
“This image involves removing pass-through windows and out-dated imagery. Our new look is fun and modern, gives us increased awareness, visibility and transparency, accessibility and service, ultimately allowing us to continue our strong store growth in this market.”
Meij said Europe has experienced significant momentum and this is set to continue with the rollout of the Global Online Ordering System in France in FY16.
“It’s important we develop our digital projects as a Group with the end goal to roll out each new digital feature in every market simultaneously. A great example of this is our GPS Driver Tracker which will also roll-out in The Netherlands in the next three to four months, as well as the rollout of our state-of-the-art electric push bikes and completion of rolling global online ordering platforms.
“We pride ourselves on having best-in-class digital platforms but FY16 is all about pushing to deliver even more for our customers."
