Hotel Chocolat annual profit rises 13 percent, eyes new markets

LONDON (Reuters) - Chocolatier Hotel Chocolat <HOTC.L> posted a 13 percent rise in annual profit on strong demand for its upmarket products and said it was pressing ahead with international expansion, targeting the Scandinavian, Japanese and U.S. markets.

For the 52 weeks ended July 1 2018, Hotel Chocolat reported pretax profit of 12.7 million pounds, higher than the 11.2 million pounds it made last year.

(Reporting by Sarah Young, Editing by Paul Sandle)