Af­ter back-to-back loss­es dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od, Pres­tige Hold­ings, the par­ent com­pa­ny of KFC, Star­bucks, TGI Fri­days, and Sub­way is ex­pect­ed to turn a prof­it by the end of this fis­cal year and in the first nine months has al­ready sold more than it did for the en­tire 2021 .

The com­pa­ny, in its unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­sults for the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed Au­gust 31, 2022, record­ed $810 mil­lion in sales, an in­crease of 65 per cent over the $491 record­ed in the pre­vi­ous year.

Pres­tige record­ed a prof­it of $37 mil­lion for the nine-month pe­ri­od which al­so rep­re­sent­ed a turn­around from the $37.7 mil­lion loss for the same pe­ri­od last year.

“We re­main pos­i­tive about our per­for­mance for the re­main­der of 2022 and ex­pect to end the fi­nan­cial year with much im­proved re­sults, when com­pared to the two pre­vi­ous years which were se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic,” said Pres­tige Hold­ings Chair­man Chris­t­ian Mout­tet.

Pres­tige, like many oth­er com­pa­nies in the restau­rant in­dus­try, suf­fered dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when pub­lic health mea­sures lead to the clo­sure of restau­rants for sev­er­al months in both 2020 and 2021. Even when restau­rants were re­opened, for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od in both years, their op­er­a­tions were lim­it­ed to take-away or curb­side ser­vice on­ly pri­or to the in­tro­duc­tion of Safe Zones in Oc­to­ber 2021.

Pres­tige record­ed loss­es of $17.7 mil­lion in 2020 and $28.3 mil­lion in 2021.

While sales have thus far im­proved in 2022, the com­pa­ny re­ceived pub­lic back­lash for var­i­ous prices in­creas­es over the course of the year, most no­tably, KFC was prompt­ed to re­verse its de­ci­sion to charge for condi­ments in March fol­low­ing a ma­jor pub­lic out­cry, as well as threats of a boy­cott of the brand fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of price in­creas­es in June.

Both mea­sures were in­tro­duced due to ris­ing costs faced by the restau­rant in­dus­try.

Chair­man Mout­tet ad­mit­ted that the com­pa­ny was still nav­i­gat­ing these chal­lenges.

Mout­tet said, “Food and oth­er cost in­fla­tion re­main a threat to our in­dus­try and sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es have been ex­pe­ri­enced in vir­tu­al­ly every area. We con­tin­ue to work close­ly with sup­pli­ers and ser­vice providers to man­age these in­creas­es and have been ju­di­cious with pric­ing ini­tia­tives so as to min­imise the im­pact on cus­tomers.”