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Chow Tai Fook Jewellery (1929) posted a 19.8 percent year-on-year decline in net profit to HK$5.38 billion for the year ended March but declared a final dividend and special dividend of HK$1 in total.
The drop was mainly due to a 5.6 percent fall in core operating profit to HK$9.4 billion, a rise in unrealised loss on gold loans amid gold price volatility, and a net foreign exchange loss resulting from the weakness in the yuan, the company said in a filing yesterday.
Excluding the special dividend of 72 HK cents, the full-year dividend was flat from a year ago but the payout ratio rose 18.4 percentage points to 92.9 percent.
Revenue for the financial year dipped by 4.3 percent to HK$94.7 billion as the retail network expansion in the mainland and the recovery after the shift in pandemic-control measures, helped mitigate the majority of the impact, it said.
It had 7,269 points of sale or POS in the mainland as of the end of March, a net increase of 1,631 compared to 12 months ago, exceeding the 7,000-POS target for 2025.
The firm also closed nine POS in Hong Kong and Macau, making the total POS in the two SARs drop to 85.
In April and May, retail sales in the mainland jumped by 34.6 percent year-on-year, accounting for 86.4 percent of the total for the group and same-store sales also rose by 16.8 percent.
Retail sales in other markets including Hong Kong and Macau also surged by 64.6 percent and same-store sales by 61.3 percent.
That was in contrast to the data for the year ended March, during which same-store sales retreated 13.1 percent from an 11.1 percent growth a year earlier, although the year-on-year decline in the March quarter narrowed to 5.6 percent from a 33.1 percent slump in the December quarter.
Same-store sales growth in the SARs, also slowed by 6.4 percentage points to 18.3 percent for the year.
Category: Hong Kong
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