"Net income for the year ended January 31, 2000 amounted to $239,132 compared with $293,605 in the year ended 31 January 1999. The reason for the lower income is due to a combination of two factors - lower sales, despite a modest increase in price to reflect increases in costs, and higher operating costs, including salaries. We are actively addressing the question of reduced margins by examination of our source of supplies and costs and steps are also being taken to reduce those operating expenses which we can control and also fixed costs where possible.
On January 14, 2000 we paid a dividend of $0.10 per share to shareholders of record December 31, 1999 and during the year the Company repurchased 30,000 of its own shares, at an average price of $3.89, reducing shares outstanding as at January 31, 2000 to 617,007. Shareholders will note that despite the repurchase of shares at a cost of $116,702 we are in a very healthy financial position with cash and deposits of $280,323 compared with $146,550 at the end of last year. Assuming earnings enable us to do so, it is our intention to continue to try and reduce the number of shares outstanding, over time, to a more manageable 600,000 shares.
Shareholders who have visited our facilities may have noted that we recently removed the pizza oven from the kitchen and that we have done some other renovations to improve the facilities. You will also note that we have invested $83,740 in the purchase of new cash registers and replaced kitchen equipment which was close to the end of its useful life. This program of upgrading our facilities will continue during the coming year. Amongst the steps we anticipate taking this year to increase our efficiency will be the utilization of a proportion of the upper dining room area for office and/or training facilities and the refurbishment of our offices which are in desperate need of renovation and new furniture.
We welcome our new manager, Mr. Kevin Manuel, who joined us in mid-November and who has rapidly assumed responsibility for day to day management. You may recall that until he joined us day to day management had been handled on a consulting basis by Graham Redford of Total Office Management. We are also pleased to report that in February we hired Tracy Robinson for the position of as assistant manager. Tracy is well known to us for she worked for TOM and acted as an accountant for KFC before assuming this new role in which she has already shown a natural talent.
On behalf of the Board I would like to pay tribute to our staff and management who have contributed to our results for the year and in particular, Graham Redford (our consultant) who has served us well over the past three years, Kevin Manual, Tracy Robinson and Doug Chase, all of whom have worked hard to achieve the results which we report for the year.
We look forward to the 2001 fiscal year with optimism and hope that steps which are being considered to improve our competitive position and to generate increased sales and profits will prove successful.
In closing, I would like to thank my fellow Executive Directors, Crayton Greene, Susan Wilson and Bill Thomson for their knowledge, assistance and hard work during the past year."