Domino's starts new year well as 2014 profit rises 15 pct

LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Britain's biggest pizza delivery firm Domino's Pizza said it had made a strong start to its new financial year after posting a 15.1 percent rise in 2014 profit, helped by popular bundle promotions and rising online orders.

Domino's, which operates mainly in the UK but also has smaller businesses in Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) , Switzerland and Germany, said on Thursday underlying pretax profit rose to 54.8 million pounds ($85.2 million) in the year to Dec. 28, broadly in line with analysts' average forecast up from 47.6 million pounds in 2013.

Sales at UK stores open over a year rose 11.3 percent in 2014, the firm said, with revamped websites helping UK and Ireland online orders grow to 69.4 percent of delivered sales year-on-year.

Dominos said it made progress in Ireland and Switzerland but continued to struggle in Germany, where expansion plans are faltering and it made an operating loss of 7.3 million pounds.

The firm kicked off big growth plans for Germany in 2011 but progress halted two years later so it could deal with problems such as wrong store formats and menus and higher wages. Analysts have said 2015 will be a make or break year for the business.

"We look forward with continued optimism," said Chief Executive David Wild. "The year has started promisingly, but there are tough comparators to beat, so we will not get complacent."

At home, Domino's said strong demand had continued at the start of 2015, with same-store sales up 9.5 percent in the first eight weeks.

Shares (Frankfurt: DI6.F - news) in the group closed at 692.5 pence on Wednesday, up 23 percent on a year ago, valuing it at 1.14 billion pounds. ($1 = 0.6435 pounds) (Reporting by Neil Maidment; editing by James Davey)