Milano restaurant chain sees Irish profits top €6m
The firm that operates the Milano chain of restaurants in Ireland increased its profits 29% to €6m last year.
Accounts filed by Agenbite Ltd which is owned by Pizza Express show that the business showed like-for-like revenues rose by 2.7% to over €25.2m. The company’s rental or operating lease costs increased to over €2.8m.
Milano, which now operates 19 restaurants including in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Ennis, and Killarney, said in the accounts that “while the rate of revenue growth is lower than in the previous period, the performance is considered to be encouraging given the continuation of challenging market conditions”.
The firm’s pre-tax profits were boosted by a €600,000 exceptional gain relating to the reversal of a 2017 impairment. The company paid a dividend of €3.8m to its parent Pizza Express, compared with almost €12.2m in 2017.
The Bejing-headquartered Hony Capital owns Pizza Express and is evaluating options on how to deal with Pizza Express’s debt. Pizza Express said earlier this week that almost all of its restaurants in the UK and Ireland were and it had “no plans for closures outside the normal course of business”.
Staff numbers fell last year to 517 from 541, while staff costs increased from to over €8.9m from €8.4m in the previous year.
