Sales growth at Domino’s Pizza has slowed in recent months, as the takeaway giant struggled to extend the boost in takings it enjoyed during the World Cup this summer.
The London-listed firm posted sales growth of 2.3 per cent in the three months to the end of September, slowed from 5.2 and 4.5 per cent in the previous two quarters.
Domino’s said it saw “positive benefits” from the World Cup in the start of its third quarter, but this football fever did not last long enough to replicate its surge in sales growth from earlier in the year.
In August, the pizza maker had credited the World Cup and a positive response to its new fried-chicken-style range for its jump in revenue to £354m in the first half of the year.
The firm’s 2.3 per cent sales growth in the last three months comes in well below its four per cent growth in the year to date.
As well as the drop in the value of sales, fewer customers have opted for Domino’s in recent months. Order growth slowed from 2.2 to 1.5 per cent in the most recent quarter.
But Domino’s said its ‘chick’n’dip’ range is continuing to perform well, noting that “customer feedback [is] highly positive and advocacy levels [are] strong”.
Domino’s bets on chicken
The pizza chain’s expansion into chicken products has a fraught past. Last year, former chief executive Andrew Rennie departed the group shortly after warning that British consumers were nearing ‘peak pizza’ and wanted chicken instead.
But new boss Nicola Frampton has said she is determined to lead Domino’s into the fried chicken market in a “disciplined” way.
“Chicken is a large adjacent category. We can enter it using our existing system rather than building a new one, and we can do that without significant additional capital investment,” she said earlier this year.
Domino’s said on Wednesday that it is on track to meet its earnings targets despite this slowdown in sales.
Frampton told investors: “Our strong performance year-to-date reflects our organic growth strategy and we have been rewarded by our focus on the core Domino’s business model.
“Whilst there is a lot of work still to be done, this gives us confidence in achieving our expectations for the full year, while building the foundations for further growth in 2027 and beyond.”
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets said the pizza firm had delivered a “decent” update, though they added that they “wonder if the market would have hoped for a slightly stronger like-for-like print after the strong Q1 and Q2”.