Member Article

Pub group suggest rain impacted sales

Birmingham-based pub group Mitchells & Butler has reported a slowdown in sales, a trend the company has attributed to the rain.

The owners of brand names such as All Bar One and Harvester said a poor first 33 weeks where like-for-like sales growth fell 2.0% was due to the weather.

Inflationary and regulatory cost pressures continued to have a negative impact on profitability, although the firm say they have invested a higher percentage of income into site-level employment costs, which is said to have driven guest satisfaction scores.

Profit before tax was shown to be down £1m to £42, and basic earnings per share were down 0.3p to 8.8p.

Bob Ivell, Executive Chairman, commented: “We have remained firmly on the front foot with a relentless focus on actions that will drive the medium and long term success of the business.

“We are continuing to deliver a resilient operating performance, maintaining the roll-out of our industry-leading brands and progressing our major business change programme.

“I am pleased with the progress being made to appoint a new CEO and further Non-Executive Directors and look forward to being able to make an announcement at the appropriate time.

“Despite challenging trading conditions, we remain confident that we can deliver a full year result in line with expectations.”

35 new Mitchells & Butlers sites have been opened in the first half of the year, creating over 1,200 new jobs, and converted 7 existing sites.

The company say they remain on track to open a total of approximately 55 new or converted sites in the financial year 2012.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .