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A staggering 69% surge in online sales from Domino's Pizza can largely be put down to its new iPhone app, which analysts today said had seen some 300,000 downloads since its launch in August.
Promotions like Two for Tuesday and the nationwide launch of lunchtime oven-baked subs costing £3.99 last month have driven extra sales.
It said same-store sales rose 9.9% in the 13 weeks to last Sunday taking its sales growth for the year to 12.5%. Including new stores, total sales rose 18% to £115.7 million, of which £33 million were online.
Chris Moore, chief executive, said: “With tough comparatives to beat, yet again our franchisees and store teams, supported by our strong head-office operation, have risen to the challenge and delivered excellent like-for-like sales growth.
“As a result of our strong trading in the third quarter and, indeed, the year so far, the board believes it is on track to achieve full-year profitability at the upper end of current market expectations.”
That sent analysts scrambling to upgrade their profit forecast for the year by around 3%-4%, suggesting pre-tax profits could rise from £29.9 million to around £36.5 million.
The leisure team at Credit Suisse said: “Domino's is one of few consumer discretionary stocks which is resilient to the UK consumer.” It has a 500p price target for the shares, which slipped 4.1p to 467.8p.
