LONDON – Whitbread PLC reported last week its trading performance for the 50 weeks to 13th February 2014.
Sales update (% change vs. prior year):
Andy Harrison, Chief Executive of Whitbread, comments:
“Whitbread delivered a strong fourth quarter, with total sales growth of 14.0% and like for like sales growth of 6.8%, driven by a particularly good Christmas trading period and, to a lesser extent, favourable weather comparatives in January.
Premier Inn grew total sales*2 by 15.2% and like for like sales by 8.3% in the fourth quarter, with a 5.7% increase in rooms available. We grew total revpar in London and the UK Regions by 7.0% and 9.6% respectively. We continue to invest in our product quality and the Premier Inn brand with the launch of “our best ever bed” campaign.
This is a central pillar of our enhanced refurbishment programme. The performance of Whitbread Restaurants continued to improve and benefitted from the absence of snow with like for like sales growth of 4.4% in the quarter. We welcomed some 92,000 guests to our restaurants on Christmas Day with sales up 5.8%. Costa had an excellent fourth quarter with total sales growth of 18.2%, driven by 312 net new store openings in the year and 7.3% UK like for like sales growth. Our Christmas campaign was well received, with like for like store transactions up 6.1% in the quarter.
The strong fourth quarter brings our year to date growth in total sales to 13.2% and like for like sales growth to 4.0%. This puts us on track to deliver full year results towards the top end of current expectations.”
Trading highlights:
Hotels and Restaurants
- Premier Inn has continued to win market share, growing total sales*2 for the 50 weeks by 13.3%, total revpar by 5.1% and total room nights sold by 9.7% to 14.3 million. Total occupancy was 78.0%, up 1.5% pts on last year.
- During the quarter, Premier Inn grew total sales*2 by 15.2%, with a 5.7% increase in the total number of rooms available and like for like sales growth of 8.3%. Total revpar grew by 9.6% and total occupancy was 68.1%, up 2.5% pts on last year.
- In a strong London market, we grew total sales by 17.0% in the quarter with a 10.7% increase in the number of rooms available. Total revpar grew by 7.0% with occupancy at 76.5%, up 1.5% pts on last year. The Midscale and Economy London competitive set*3 grew total revpar by 11.6%.
- In the UK regions, our total sales grew by 14.3% in the quarter, with a 5.1% increase in the number of rooms available. Total revpar was up 9.6% with occupancy at 67.1%, up 2.6% pts. The Midscale and Economy regional competitive set*3 grew total revpar by 14.5%.
- We announced during the year our enhanced room refurbishment programme and, as a consequence, have reduced the expected average life of a room from 15 to 12 years. This will increase our depreciation charge by around £6 million for this year and next.
- Restaurants delivered a good performance over the fourth quarter and benefitted from the favourable weather comparatives with like for like sales growth of 4.4% and covers up 3.7%.
- For the full year we will open around 3,500 new rooms and approximately 4,500 new rooms in 2014/15. Our committed UK pipeline remains strong at 10,500 rooms.
Costa
- Costa continued to perform strongly, growing total system sales in the 50 weeks by 19.2% to £1,151.8 million. Within this, franchise sales were up 16.8% to £447.6 million.
- UK Retail system sales grew by 17.6% to £622.9 million, with equity stores delivering like for like sales growth of 5.8%.
- Costa Enterprises grew system sales to £276.5 million, up 22.6%.
- EMEI system sales grew by 11.1% to £183.9 million. We have now opened four equity stores in Paris in addition to the two existing franchised stores in France.
- Costa Asia system sales grew by 49.7% to £68.4 million.
- Costa has opened 312 net new stores including 167 in the UK and 145 internationally and added 918 net Costa Express machines taking the total to 3,478. Next year we plan to open a broadly similar number of stores and install around 600 Costa Express units.
Group
