Majestic Wine PLC (“Majestic” or the “Company”), the UK’s largest wine specialist, today announces its preliminary results for the 52 weeks ended 30 March 2009.

Download the full statement (PDF format)

Highlights

• Total sales increased by 2.4% to £201.8m (2008: £197.0m).
• Underlying profit before tax down 22.3% to £12.7m (2008: £16.4m).
• Profit before tax down 55.8% to £7.4m (2008: £16.7m) after non-cash impairment charge of £5.3m.
• Impairment charge of £5.3m taken against the carrying value of goodwill of the French business, Wine and Beer World. It has seen a decline in sales as customers are discouraged from travelling due to the strength of the euro.
• Encouragingly UK like for like sales for the ten weeks from 31 March to 8 June 2009 were up 2.0%.
• Ecommerce sales achieved growth of 16% on previous year and now represent 9.1% of UK retail sales (2008: 7.9%).
• Average bottle of wine purchased at Majestic is now £6.35 (2008: £5.98) with 418,000 customers purchasing in the last year.
• Final dividend of 7.0p per share, maintaining the total dividend to 9.8p per share (2008: 9.8p).
• Acquisition of Lay and Wheeler, a fine wine specialist, in March 2009. Good progress with integration and encouraging sales performance since acquisition.
• Four new stores opened during the year in Hereford, Leatherhead, Finchley and Summertown in north Oxford. Since year end have opened in Shrewsbury and Southend-on-Sea. The opening on Leith Walk, Edinburgh in June will bring the total number of stores trading in the UK to 150.

Commenting on the results Steve Lewis, Chief Executive of Majestic, said:

“The resilience of our core consumer business is encouraging, our market share has held steady and we are confident that Majestic is well positioned to benefit from any upturn in the economy.”