Papa Murphy’s parent posts $2.6M profit

Papa Murphy’s Holdings Inc., the Vancouver-based parent of Papa Murphy’s take-and-bake pizza chain, said Wednesday it recorded a first-quarter profit of $2.6 million. That compares with a profit of $819,000 in the same January-to-March period in 2014.

Meanwhile, the company posted total revenue of $29.16 million in the three months ended March 30. That’s up 16 percent from $25.11 million in the year-ago period.

Papa Murphy’s also experienced an increase of 5.6 percent in domestic comparable store sales. It was the company’s 17th consecutive quarter of comparable store sales growth.

During the company’s earnings conference call Wednesday, Ken Calwell, president and CEO of Papa Murphy’s, said the company is focused on one of its most important tools for future growth: a point-of-sale software system. The company sees such a system as key to supporting online ordering and precision marketing efforts. With such a system in place, Calwell said, Papa Murphy’s will be able to market directly to customers. That includes “a primary target — moms.”

In a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it’s rolled out point-of-sale system terminals at more than 1,000 stores. Stores that have installed the system have reduced their operating costs by about 0.5 percent on average, according to the company’s SEC filing, and increased their sales by about 2 percent on average.

Founded in 1981, Papa Murphy’s went public in May 2014, making its costs and profits public for the first time. Calwell noted the one-year anniversary of the company’s public stock offering, saying “we’re even more excited today, with significant opportunities, than we were just a short year ago.”

As of March 30, the company had a total of 1,476 stores: 1,338 franchise stores and 108 corporate-owned stores across 38 states, plus 30 franchise stores in Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

The company’s stock, which trades as FRSH on the Nasdaq exchange, closed up 41 cents Wednesday, at $18.25 per share.