Domino’s Pizza Enterprises (DPE) has entered an agreement to acquire a chain of 89 pizza stores in France for €35 million ($A54.87 million).
Currently owned by Franck Guegan and Food Court Finance SRL, Pizza Sprint is a leading pizza chain in the west of France, comprised of 12 corporate stores and 77 franchise stores, with a format suited to both major cities and smaller population centres.
The acquisition will take Domino’s total number of stores in France to 330 and provide significant benefits to the efficiency of DPE’s franchise system and logistics in the French market.
“The acquisition of Pizza Sprint will build a sizeable and complementary store presence for DPE in the west of France, provide insights on store formats which suit trading in regional towns and add 20 per cent to our national marketing budget, delivering benefits across the enlarged store network,” said Andrew Rennie, DPE’s CEO Europe.
In the most recent financial year, ended March 31, 2015, Pizza Sprint delivered network sales of approximately €30.4m and achieved earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of the order of €3.5 million.
“Pizza Sprint is a small but important acquisition which allows DPE to capitalise on the forward momentum we have been able to achieve in our European business, particularly in the last few years,” said Domino’s MD and CEO, Don Meij. “We continuously look for opportunities to grow, both within our existing business and through further acquisitions.”
The transaction is scheduled to complete in January 2016 and DPE will work with the vendors and franchisees to convert the Pizza Sprint stores to Domino’s Pizza stores from that time until the end of the 2017 calendar year.
Owner of Pizza Sprint, Franck Guegan, founded the business in 1998.
“We are pleased that the Pizza Sprint business will be passed to such a pre-eminent pizza chain operator in DPE and are delighted that our franchisees will be able to access DPE’s global expertise in product, procurement and digital offerings which will benefit our customers,” Guegan said.
As a result of the acquisition, DPE revised its guidance for new store openings in FY16 to between 260 and 280 stores, up from its previous guidance range of 180 to 200 stores. Due to the strong performance of the business in Europe recently, Domino’s is also revising its long term store count guidance upwards from 1350 to 1500.
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