Fulham Shore PLC (AIM:FUL), which runs The Real Greek and Franco Manca restaurant chains, issued a trading update today for the first two months of the new fiscal year.
The company said “trading has rebounded positively from the various Covid-19 interruptions” and that newly opened restaurants are “performing strongly”.
Its share price rose 4.5% to 14.89p in the first hour of trading this morning.
Fulham Shore reported growth in new customers returning to eating out after a pandemic lull, saying it serves more than 100,000 customers per week at Franco Manca and 40,000 at The Real Greek.
Its growth plan involves targeting new locations that benefit from “historically low rental levels” and it met industry cost pressures with “menu inflation”, reporting “strong trading” in suburbs and shopping centres.
The restaurateur has opened three new restaurants in the past couple of months of trading, including two new Franco Manca pizzerias in Canterbury and Kingston upon Thames and one new site for The Real Greek in Newcastle. They add to the 10 new restaurants it opened in the year through to 27 March.
Fulham Shore said it plans to open 11 new restaurants by March 2023 and a total of 18 across the full financial year.
David Page, the firm's executive chairman, said: “Our new restaurant openings across the UK continue to trade very well, and we have an exciting pipeline of new sites for the remainder of the financial year."
The company said it had £3.6mln in net cash before lease liabilities as of 6 June and undrawn bank facilities of £15.9m.