Westlife Development Limited owner of the master franchisee of McDonald’s restaurants in West and South India, announced unaudited financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2019.
Despite a challenging economic environment, the company continued to move strongly on its growth path. On the back of a solid strategy centered around delivering exceptional customer experience and creating new occasions for customers to consume the brand, WDL reported an SSSG of 9.2 percent, over a high SSSG of 14.5 percent same quarter, last year. This marks the 18th consecutive quarter of positive same-store sales growth for the company. WDL tapped into the festive season and launched a slew of value and occasion-led campaigns owing to which the company’s revenue surged by 16.8 percent to Rs 4,329.3 million.
The company continued to maximise operational efficiencies coupled with strict cost control that led to more than 200 bps expansion in Restaurant Operating Margins and Operating EBITDA. As a result, the company’s net profit grew to Rs 227.2 million, up by 228.3 percent from last year, same quarter. The cash profit for the quarter stood at Rs 449.6 million.
Commenting on the financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2019, Amit Jatia, Vice-Chairman of Westlife Development Limited said, “Our strategy centered on customer experience, digitization and maximizing efficiencies is gaining momentum and delivering consistent results. Through McCafé, McDelivery and McBreakfast, we have mindfully created more occasions to drive increased brand usage across all days-parts. This has helped us stay the course of our growth despite a challenging economic environment, slower-than-expected GDP growth and tepid consumer sentiment. We are absolutely committed to remaining relevant to our evolving customers and delivering great value and customer experience.”
This quarter, WDL added 11 new restaurants taking the total restaurant count to 315 and continued to accelerate the footprint of its ‘Experience of The Future’ restaurants. It also kept its value platform buzzing with the launch of the McSaver combos campaign. As a part of this campaign, the company offered more than 50 combos of burger or sides with beverages at compelling price points. This ‘variety@value’ proposition hit home with the customers and further strengthened the brand’s position as a ‘value-for-money’ destination.
The company continued to grow its volumes and visit-frequency by creating more occasions for our customers to celebrate. In October, McCafe achieved the milestone of serving 10 million cups of coffee. The company leveraged this occasion by asking customers to share their special coffee moments which helped build further brand love. It also celebrated November as ‘Children’s month’ through its #iamkiddinit campaign which gave families an occasion to come together and celebrate at McDonald’s.
McDonald’s brand extensions have been instrumental in establishing McDonald’s as ‘one for all, all for one’ brand and have strengthened the brand consideration across day parts.
McCafé, now a preferred coffee destination, has helped the brand expand its addressable market significantly. A strong testimony to this is the fact that is that in the last four years, McCafé sales have increased 8x. This quarter, WDL added 13 more McCafés, taking the number of the brand’s in-house coffee chain units to 218.
McDelivery continues to grow from strength to strength. This quarter, McDelivery India was among the top 5 McDelivery global markets for most deliveries achieved in one day. The company now has 258 delivery hubs and is tapping into both its owned platform as well as third party aggregators to serve the burgeoning delivery market.
WDL also added to some festive cheer this quarter with its ‘Not So Secret Santa’ campaign. Through this social media campaign the brand called onto its customers to tag their friends who needed some festive cheer and sent them exciting goodie bags and voucher for an instant ‘lift me up’. The campaign helped further enhance brand love.
At WDL, technology and an Omnichannel strategy have been at the base of initiatives. With digitally enabled EOTF (Experience of the Future) restaurants, apps and technology-led back-end innovations, the brand is well on its way to become a food-tech company.
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