Punch Taverns, the tenanted and leased pub company, continued to see improvement in like-for-like trends across its core estate for the 16 weeks to 10 December, driven by its pubs in the South, which offset declines across its sites in the North, and disposals.
The company said that like-for-like net income trends in its core estate of 2,948 pubs declined by 1.5% during the period, a slight improvement on that seen in its 2011 financial year (-2.1%).
Within this, it said that pubs in the South continued to show an improved performance with a growth in like-for-like net income, offset by declines in the North of the UK.
Like-for-like net income across its non-core estate also improved slightly, declining by 10.4%, compared to a drop of 13% in the year to August.
The percentage of the group’s pubs on substantive agreements remained at 95% and Punch said it was seeing healthy levels of interest from new applicants.
The number of closed pubs in its core estate stood at 11 and it said that less than 2% of its estate was on tenancy-at-will agreements for which it was actively seeking new applicants.
The group remains on track to dispose of between 400 and 500 non-core pubs during its full year. During the quarter, it sold 116 pubs, together with other assets for proceeds of £31m, which it said was slightly ahead of book value.
The disposed pubs generated just £1.2m of Ebitda over the last 12 months, which the company said demonstrated the accretive nature of these disposals.
The group said it was continuing to actively reviewing options regarding optimising its capital structure and to facilitate its plan to downsize the estate effectively.
It said that whilst this review was taking place it continued to provide financial support to the securitisations (Punch A and Punch B) during the quarter. Without this support the Debt Service Cover Ratio’s (DSCR's) would have remained below their respective financial covenant levels.
Roger Whiteside, chief executive, said: “Trading in the first 16 weeks of the financial year has been broadly in line with management expectations. While the UK consumer environment is likely to remain challenging for at least the near-term, we have a clear operational plan to return the core estate to growth in the medium-term and extract maximum value from our non-core assets.”
