Wellington, April 6 - New Zealand fast food franchise owner Restaurant Brands on Thursday posted a 5 percent fall in annual net profit, and said it would sell its Australian businesses.
The company, which operates Pizza Hut, KFC, and Starbucks franchises, posted a NZ$10.5 million ($6.4 million) profit for the year ended Feb. 28 compared with NZ$10.6 million in the year before.
Total sales were NZ$316.4 million, up 2.1 percent on a year ago. Store earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 0.1 percent to NZ$45.2 million.
The company, which also operates a chain of Pizza Hut stores in the Australian state of Victoria, had been the subject of a NZ$160 million takeover attempt by private equity firm CVC Asia Pacific Ltd. until CVC pulled out last year.
The firm said on Thursday it would sell the underperforming Pizza Hut stores in Australia to individual franchisees, resulting in a pre-tax writedown of NZ$7 million. The Australian operations posted a NZ$3.1 million loss for the year.
Restaurant Brands announced last October a 65 percent fall in first half profits because of a NZ$2.9 million goodwill write off from its Australian operations, and said it expected annual profit to remain flat.
The group declared a 5.5 cent per share final dividend. The company's shares last traded on Thursday at NZ$1.28 having traded between NZ$1.20 and NZ$1.68 over the last year.
($1=NZ$1.63)