Premier Foods, owner of Mr Kipling cakes and Oxo stock cubes, has reported higher third-quarter sales, helped by further improvement in its brands.
The company said sales rose 4% to £261.4m, with sales of its own brands up 0.7% and products it manufactures for retailers' brands rising 17%.
The results beat some analysts' forecasts.
Analysts, who had been expecting only 2.8% growth, pointed to a 3.4% gain in the company's core branded grocery business, its second straight quarter of improvement.
The company said its expectations for the current year were unchanged and that net debt at the end of 2018 will be lower than last year.
A weekend newspaper report said Premier Foods was in talks to sell its Batchelors brand to Japan's Nissin Foods, its biggest shareholder with a nearly 20% stake.
The company said yesterday that any talks with third parties it has had as part of an ongoing review had not gone beyond an "exploratory stage".
The company has struggled under a heavy debt burden and pressure from investors after it rejected a takeover bid in 2016 from McCormick.
