Park Food expands by buying Heritage Hampers for pounds 10.5m
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Your support makes all the difference.PARK FOOD, the Christmas hamper company, has paid pounds 10.5m for rival Heritage Hampers, thereby expanding its customer base by 15 per cent.
News of the acquisition came with the announcement of annual results that showed a 14 per cent advance in pre-tax profits.
Park sees scope to improve profitability at Heritage. Peter Johnson, chairman, said the average sale per Heritage agent was about pounds 800 against an average of nearly pounds 1,500 per Park sales agent.
Park earns most of its money selling Christmas hampers, paid for in weekly instalments through the year. It sold 1 million last Christmas through a network of 70,000 sales agents.
Park made taxable profits of pounds 11.8m for the year to 31 March, up from pounds 10.3m last time. Operating profit from hampers rose 8 per cent. Extra growth was derived from the acquisition of HSL, a marketing company bought for pounds 9.3m last December. It added pounds 493,000 to operating profits.
Park has also made a pounds 4m investment in new technology at a potato processing factory. It indicated that the project held good profit potential.
Earnings per share for last year were 5.04p compared with 4.43p. The total dividend has been raised 20 per cent to 2.4p.
Shares have climbed tenfold in the last five years, outperforming the market average by 800 per cent. Yesterday they rose 4p to 131p.
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