Greene King has this morning announced that like-for-like sales across its managed estate were up 4.8% over the last 16 weeks and that it had recorded its 22nd consecutive quarter of like-for-like sales growth.
Like-for-like sales for the year to 27 April climbed 4.1%, with food sales up 5% and room sales up 6.8%.
Average EBITDA per pub across its Pub Partners leased division increased 5% during the year.
The company said it expected to meet market expectations for the full year.
During the last 16 weeks, the company said it saw good growth on key events such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Easter. On Mother’s Day, it served a single day record of 262,000 food covers with like-for-like sales growth of 17.1%.
It said that its Farmhouse Inns performed particularly well with average sales per site of £14.4k and three sites delivering over £16k.
The company expects the Retail margin to be slightly ahead of last year.
The group said that its Retail expansion programme remains on track and it expects to have added 45 new Retail sites by the year-end, taking Retail to 1,032 sites, with Hungry Horse reaching 232 sites by the year-end.
It said: “Our strategy to reduce the size and improve the quality of the Pub Partners’ estate continues and we expect to end this financial year with 1,164 sites, 149 less than last year, after 134 disposals and 15 transfers to Retail”.
The company said that its Brewing & Brands had again improved its market share, achieving core OBV growth of 4.6% against a UK ale market down 2.3%. It said: “Our continued strong performance was driven by Old Speckled Hen, the UK’s leading premium ale brand, which recorded growth of 12.5%.”
Rooney Anand, chief executive officer, said: “We have achieved consistently strong trading in each of our businesses through the year. This reflects the strengths of our business and the success of our strategy to move to higher growth areas in our markets and to improve the customer offer. We expect to meet the market’s full year expectations for profit, cashflow and the balance sheet, with further improvement in our ROCE and a further reduction in leverage.
“Looking ahead, we see the UK’s economic outlook improving. Throughout the downturn wage growth lagged inflation but this quarter has seen that change for the first time since the recession began, which bodes well for the future. Customers, though, are still spending carefully, as highlighted by our most recent Leisure Spend Tracker report. Hence we remain cautiously optimistic for the forthcoming financial year.”
