LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Greggs plc said its full-year growth would be ahead of its previous expectations, the latest in a series of upgrades, as new products like a spicy meatball melt baguette helped drive underlying sales in the third quarter.
Newcastle, northern England, based Greggs, which sells sandwiches, sausage rolls and pastries from 1,668 retail outlets, said like-for-like sales rose 4.9 percent in the 13 weeks to Oct. 3, ahead of its own expectations.
Chief Executive Roger Whiteside said sales had grown more than 10 percent in the last two years, helped by increased demand for breakfast and a wider selection of products like healthier sandwiches later in the day.
"Breakfast is the fastest growing part of the day for us, and with that comes coffee sales," he said. "And we have just launched the hot eating ranges for the autumn, with new flavours of soup and a relaunch of hot sandwiches doing really well."
Growth for 2015 would as a result be slightly ahead of its previous expectations, the company said. Ahead of Tuesday's update analysts were forecasting pretax profit of 70 million pounds, 20 percent up on last year.
Shares in Greggs climbed 6 percent to 1,137 pence at 0829 GMT, topping Britain's midcap index leaderboard.
"We believe the instore initiatives, product innovation, refit programme and cost saving initiatives will provide ongoing momentum to the Greggs story and we reiterate our 'buy' stance," said Shore Capital analyst Darren Shirley.
Greggs said increases in wage rates would drive greater inflationary pressure.
Whiteside said Greggs already paid close to the new national minimum wage rate coming in next April of 7.20 pounds an hour, and its annual review would comfortably take it above the minimum, but he would be watching the steps taken by rivals.
"We don't want to lose our attractiveness in the market for labour," he said.