Finsbury Food Group is eyeing further acquisitions to help grow the bakery and cake supplier into a £500m business.
The UK-listed group completed the £56m acquisition of morning goods specialist Fletchers Group in October to effectively double its annualised sales to £300m.
CEO John Duffy said the group wants to almost double revenues again to £500m “over the next few years” and has held talks with a number of potential partners.
“The past few months have been about getting our heads down an executing the Fletcher’s acquisition and rewarding the equity raise we did late last year,” he said. “In the background we’re still talking to people and there’s now doubt that when Fletchers has bedded in we will look for opportunities again.”
“We’ve got an open mind at the moment on whether they may be small bolt-on acquisition within the product capabilities we’ve got or whether we spot an opportunity to broaden our portfolio. “
“We’ve still got the appetite, ambition and financial fire power, but we will use it with discretion.”
Finsbury reported a 24.1% jump in first half revenues after being boosted by its acquisition of Fletchers. Revenues were up to £107.6m during the six months to 27 December 2014, including two months of sales contribution from Fletchers.
Like-for-like sales were up a healthy 5.6% driven by market share growth in its UK cakes businesses, while pre-tax profit almost doubled from £2.1m to £4.1m.
Duffy warned the tough trading environment “was not going to get any easier”, but said its investment in the business had boosted efficiencies and the group was benefiting from its appeal to a broad customer base.
“Finsbury is one of the few players in bakery in a strong position to drive value growth in the category,” he said.
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