Whitbread, the owner of Costa Coffee and Premier Inn, said this morning that it was on track to meet full-year expectations, as it reported a rise in like-for-like sales across all its divisions for the 13 weeks to 1 December, but warned that trading continued to be “variable”.
The company’s total sales for the period were up 11.4% year-on-year, while like-for-like sales climbed 2.4%.
Trading in the most recent period was again driven by the performance of its Costa Coffee chain, which reported a 3.8% increase in like-for-like sales during the quarter, while total sales climbed 25.2%.
Budget hotel chain, Premier Inn, reported an 8.3% rise in total sales with like-for-like sales up 2.6%. The company’s hotels and restaurants saw sales climb 6.3%, with like-for-like sales up 2.1%.
Sales across its pub restaurants, which includes the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre brands, grew by 2.9%, with like-for-like sales up 1.1%.
For the 39 weeks to 1 December, the group’s total sales were up 11.2% on the previous year, with like-for-like sales up 3%.
Costa reported a 25.1% rise in total sales for the 39 weeks, with like-for-like sales up 5.6%, while Premier Inn saw a 9.8% increase in total sales and a 4.3% rise in like-for-like sales. The group’s hotels and restaurants reported a 6.4% increase in total sales, with a 2.3% rise in like-for-like sales.
Sales for the 39 weeks across its pub restaurants climbed by 1.3%, however like-for-like sales dropped by 0.7%.
Whitbread said that Costa continued to delivered a strong performance growing total system sales by 23.9% to £602m for the 39 weeks, within which franchise sales were up 18.3% to £246m.
Like-for-like sales across its UK stores climbed 5.6% with transactions up 6%.
The group opened 277 new stores during the period and expects to add approximately 300 stores worldwide in its current financial year. It said it had so far rebranded 579 Costa Express units in the UK and was proceeding with the rebranding of the remaining 498 Coffee Nation units.
The company’s restaurants delivered total covers growth of 2.6% over the 39 weeks, with six new restaurants opened. It plans to have opened around 4,000 new rooms and 13 restaurants in the UK by the full year.
Premier Inn increased total room nights sold by 7.4% to 9.6 million during the 39 weeks. RevPar for the period increased by 3.2% on a like-for-like basis driven by a 2.1% rise in room rate and a 0.8 percentage points increase in occupancy to 80.3%. Like-for-like RevPAR grew by 9.4% in London and 2% in the provinces.
Andy Harrison, chief executive, said: “Our like-for-like sales performance keeps us on track to deliver full year results in line with expectations. As we said at the half year, trading month by month continues to be variable in a challenging consumer environment.
“Within the total hotel market, industry data shows that RevPAR growth in London and the provinces has virtually disappeared, with the London market showing broadly flat RevPAR and the provinces a marginal decline over the last six weeks. Nevertheless, Premier Inn continues to win share in both markets. Restaurants have responded positively to the actions we are taking to improve performance. Costa has continued its good growth both in terms of like for like sales and store numbers.
“In line with our growth programme, this year we will open 4,000 new rooms and 300 Costa stores, creating some 2,500 new UK jobs."
In November, the group signed a new five-year revolving credit facility for £650m replacing its existing bank loan facilities of £930m. It said that together with the seven and 10-year private placements put in place in July 2010 and June 2011, it now has total facilities of the sterling equivalent of just over £900m.
