Inditex expansion aids bumper year The rapid international growth of Inditex has been uninterrupted over the past year as the Galician owner of the Zara fashion chain continues to open new stores at a rate of more than one a day. Reporting for the full year up to the end of January, Inditex said that net profits rose by 12 per cent to €1.932bn, while net sales rose by 10 per cent to €13.793bn - confounding expectations of falling consumer spending in Europe hurting sales, and leaving analysts struggling to find negative details to focus on. "It's not easy to find any negative aspects to these results," said Gonzalo Sanz Martin at Mirabaud. If we had to stress one, we could point out that the impressive sales performance has been accompanied by an increase in operating expenses, which have grown by 12 per cent in the fourth quarter. Inditex said that it opened 483 new stores over the year across 82 markets, five of which were new, and created over 9,000 new jobs to take its total employee number to 109,512 at the end of last year. Stripping out new store openings, annual sales still rose by 4 per cent on a like-for-like basis, with this growth continuing into the new year with store sales in local currencies - adjusted for the extra leap year day - rising by 11 per cent from February 1 to March 14. Inditex, which has a total cash pile of €3.46bn, has said it will propose a 12.5 per cent increase in its dividend to €1.80 per share. The new markets entered over the year were Azerbaijan, Taiwan, Australia, South Africa and Peru, while 132 new outlets were opened in China, 30 of which were Zara, while the others were from other Inditex brands such as Oysho and Zara Home. Earlier in the year the company had given guidance to investors that its gross margin could drop by 110 basis points, down from a record gross margin achieved in 2010. However, Inditex's overall gross margin for the year ended up breaking that record, rising 10 per cent to €8,180bn. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation rose by 10 per cent to €3,258bn.