SINGAPORE (Feb 28): Soup Restaurant Group reported a 3.2% rise in FY16 earnings of $998,000 on lower expenses.
This comes despite a 6.4% fall in revenue to $38.3 million from $41 million in the previous year, mainly due to the loss of revenue of $4.6 million from the closure of three outlets.
Nonetheless, the group’s existing and five additional new outlets which opened over the last two quarters grew by $1.9 million, while revenue from its food processing, distribution and procurement services segment also increased by $0.1 million.
Similar to FY15, other income and purchases & other consumables remained at $0.6 million and at 23% of revenue respectively.
Subsequent to the closure of the three outlets, employee benefits expenses decreased by 10.1% to $13.5 million in FY16, also partially due to the reduction in headcount and related staff costs of the group’s existing restaurants.
Other expenses fell 1.5% as a result of a net decrease in operating expenses, which was partially offset by an increase in contract workers and operating lease expenses of $0.2 million, as well as one-off and pre-operating expenses of $0.3 million for the opening and closure of outlets.
Soup Restaurant says it is in the midst of exploring new retail concepts and taking the opportunity to consolidate and streamline its brands, while looking for prime locations within Singapore and overseas for expansion.
At the same time, the group says it has plans to increase its central processing resources to increase its distribution capacity, tighten costs control and improve its productivity.
Shares of Soup Restaurant closed 1.6% lower at 19 cents on Tuesday.
