Innovative and acquisitive cake baker Inter Link Foods impresses with every step and another superlative set of results presages an increasingly appetizing future.

As the UK cake market grew at 4.8%, Inter Link increased like-for-like sales by 9% in the six months to 5 November 2005. ‘The grocery multiples are ordering more,’ explains affable executive chairman Alwin Thompson, ‘so we must be offering better, more innovative products.’ Moreover, Christmas was ‘excellent’ and the company sold 120m mince pies, compared to 65m last time.

Another ever more potent ingredient, says Thompson, is Inter Link’s buying power. As Inter Link is ‘Britain’s fastest-growing baker’ suppliers want do business, meaning margins can be maintained. Manufacturing operations are being consolidated into ‘fewer, larger, more efficient sites’ in another move aimed at keeping costs down.

Furthermore, the economical operations at Polish acquisition CMJ are expected to produce some £12m of cakes in the year, most of which is new business exported back into Britain. And, having ‘gone through the learning curve’ there, Thompson reveals that ‘we are looking to acquire another site similar to CMJ in central Europe’.

For the interim, profits before tax and exceptionals rose 42.1% to £3.8m on sales ahead 51.8% at £67.2m and the interim dividend increased 16.2% to 2.5p per share. House broker Brewin Dolphin forecasts profits before tax and exceptionals to come in 64% higher at £9.7m for the full year on turnover up 45% at £142m. Predicted EPS figures of 57.5 and 63.7 for the full year and next indicate the shares trade at a discount to their peers. Still worth buying.

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