Jollibee To Close 255 Stores Due To Financial Losses

Written by Marc Adrian

The country’s homegrown fast-food giant Jollibee Foods Corporation (JFC) has recently felt the brunt of the pandemic as it suffered huge financial losses during the lockdown in the country. 

Their reported net loss is ₱10.171 billion from April to June, which reversed the ₱1.04 profit it recorder in the same three month period last year, according to the Philippine Stock Exchange. 

Jollibee has seen a net loss of ₱11.96 billion in the first six months of this year from a net income of ₱2.502 billion year-on-year.  Its system-wide sales dropped by 48.4 percent to just ₱30.7 billion year-on-year in the same quarter as last year. 

88% of JFC’s stores reopened in a limited capacity by the end of the quarter, where the company relied greatly on delivery and take-out services. This caused the revenues to fall by 46.6%  to ₱23.3 billion in the 2nd quarter.

JFC chief executive officer Ernesto Tanmantiong said in an interview:

“The business results were very bad but in line with our forecasts. We are now focusing on rebuilding our business moving forward along with implementing major cost improvement under our Business Transformation program.” 

Despite that,  Jollibee is expecting to improve its sales and profit by 2021, with a projected growth rate of 15% in 2022. The company also plans to open 338 more outlets worldwide in 2020, including several in the United States. In 2021, it also seeks to make Smashburger and The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf profitable.

“We expect sales and profit to improve over the next few months. Our business building effort includes introducing exciting new products, launching new marketing campaigns, opening cloud kitchens, introducing improvement in our delivery systems and opening new stores at selected locations particularly in North America, Vietnam, Malaysia and China.”  Tanmantiong said.

 

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