Whitbread PLC, the UK’s largest hotel and restaurant group, has reported a good start to its financial year as shown in its trading performance for the 13 weeks to 30 May 2013.
Andy Harrison, Chief Executive of Whitbread comments:
“Whitbread had a good start to the new financial year with first quarter Group sales up 13.8% and like for like sales up 3.1%, in line with our plan.
“Premier Inn, the UK’s leading hotel chain, maintained its positive momentum growing total sales by 12.7% and like for like sales by 2.7%, against strong comparatives in the London hotel market last year.
“Our restaurants saw an improved performance in recent weeks, after a tough start to the quarter due to the unseasonably cold weather.
“Costa, the UK’s favourite coffee shop, has continued to perform well, benefitting from the cold weather, with total sales growth of 24.8% and like for like sales growth of 8.0%.
“We see no change to market conditions. Our plans for profitable organic growth are well established which, combined with our strong focus on returns, should create further substantial shareholder value.”
Sales update (% change vs. prior year)
| Sales for the 13 weeks to 30 May 2013 | ||
| Like for like sales | Total sales | |
| Premier Inn | 2.7% | 12.7% |
| Restaurants | 0.0% | 2.6% |
| Hotels and Restaurants | 1.7% | 8.8% |
| Costa | 8.0% | 24.8% |
| Total | 3.1% | 13.8% |
Trading highlights for the 13 weeks
Hotels and Restaurants
- Premier Inn grew total sales by 12.7% with total room nights sold increasing by 10.9% to 3.7 million.
- Premier Inn grew total revpar by 1.7% to £42.57, in line with the growth of the Midscale and Economy competitive set. Our revpar premium over the competitive set was maintained at £6.08 year on year. Like for like revpar grew by 1.0% with occupancy up 0.9%pts to 76.6% and rate down by 0.2%.
- In London, Premier Inn sales grew by 19.9% as we increased the number of rooms available by 20.6% year on year. Our total revpar declined by 1.8% to £74.34 compared to the competitive set where revpar declined by 3.8% and against a strong market this time last year due to the preparations for the Olympics. Our revpar premium over the competitive set increased by 9.4% to £17.16 year on year as we continued to grow our central London estate.
- Restaurants delivered flat like for like sales in the quarter with cold weather substantially impacting sales at the start of the year, offset by an improved performance over the last few weeks.
- 794 rooms and three joint site restaurants were opened in the quarter and for the full year we plan to open around 4,000 rooms and ten joint site restaurants.
Costa
- Costa grew total system sales by 23.1% to £281.8 million, with total franchise system sales up 21.6% to £111.8 million.
- UK Retail system sales grew by 20.1% to £151.5 million, with equity stores delivering like for like sales of 8.0% aided by cold weather at the beginning of the quarter.
- Costa Enterprises (including Costa Express) delivered system sales of £67.1 million, up 32.6%. There are now 2,924 Costa Express units.
- We opened 39 net new UK stores in the quarter, 36 in UK Retail and three in Costa Enterprises.
- Internationally, system sales grew by 21.3% to £63.3 million, with growth of 13.2% in EMEI and 54.3% in Costa Asia. We opened 21 net new stores including 18 in China where we now have 271 stores.
- We plan to open around 300 net new stores and have raised our target to 750 Costa Express units in the full year.