UK’s Domino’s Pizza unveils $90 million share buyback, raises profit forecast

(Reuters) – Britain’s Domino’s Pizza Group (LON:) announced a 70 million pound ($89.78 million) share buyback programme on Tuesday and raised its annual profit forecast range helped by higher orders and sales in the first half of the year.

Resilient customer spending has helped the UK hospitality slowly recover from pandemic lows amid pressures from high costs.

“While we continue to face a challenging and uncertain macroeconomic environment, we remain confident in the many opportunities we see for Domino’s in 2023,” interim Chief Executive Elias Diaz Sese said in a statement.

In the first half of the year, total orders increased 2.8% to 35.4 million, helping the company to post an 8.2% rise in underlying core profit.

The company, a franchisee of U.S.-based Domino’s Pizza (NYSE:) Inc, said it now expects an underlying core profit of about 132 million pounds – 138 million pounds for the year.

Analysts on average had expected 127.6 million pounds, according to a company-compiled consensus.

($1 = 0.7797 pounds)