Jubilant Foodworks net jumps 55 pct; shares up

India's Jubilant Foodworks, which runs the Dominos Pizza chain in the country, posted a forecast-beating 55 percent jump in quarterly profit on robust demand and store launches, beating estimates and sending its shares up more than 5 percent.

Markets also cheered Jubilant's upward revision of its new store launch target to 85 stores from 80 in the current fiscal year .

The fast food chain operator opened 28 new stores in the December quarter, while its same store sales growth, a key gauge of profitability for retailers, stood at a robust 30 percent.

Jubilant recorded a net profit of 294.7 million rupees for the fiscal third quarter and its net sales grew 49 percent to 2.77 billion rupees.

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Analysts had estimated a net profit of 272.5 million rupees, Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S showed.

India's $13 billion quick service restaurant market is growing 25 to 30 percent annually, driven by a generation of young and increasingly wealthy consumers with an appetite for western tastes.

"Our product and store additions continued at a healthy pace. We are successfully enhancing our market share and fortifying our leadership in the quick service industry," co-chairman Hari S. Bhartia said in a statement.

In an inflationary environment, Jubilant's EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation) was 18.9 percent during the quarter compared with 17.4 percent in the previous year.

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The company said it plans to launch the first Dunkin Donut store in the country in the next quarter and plans to open 80-100 such stores over five years.

At 2:34 p.m., shares in Jubilant, which the market values at$1.2 billion, added 2.53 percent to 942.6 rupees in a choppy Mumbai market.