Member Article

Punters boost Wetherspoons’ start to the year

Pub chain J D Wetherspoons has experienced a 5.2% increase in like-for-like sales across the first part of the year.

The multiple reported a slight drop in operating margins due to costs across IT, training and staff hiring, incurred as it gears up to introduce up to 50 new pubs this year.

Just this week Wetherspoons controversially opened its first motorway services pub in Buckinghamshire.

During the first part of the year the firm arranged fixed interest rates on its existing debt between July 2018 and Jul7 2023.

While Wetherspoons has continued to enjoy healthy growth over the past few years, much of the tenanted pub industry has suffered considerably with fine margins.

Reforms to the pub industry were debated this week in Parliament and Wetherspoons used their trading update to reiterate concerns about taxation of the industry.

The statement read: “As the Company has pointed out on previous occasions, the pub industry continues to pay far higher taxes than supermarkets do, mainly as a result of an unequal and unfair VAT and business rates burden.

“This tax inequality has greatly widened the pricing differential for beer and other products between the on and off trade. Approximately 10,000 pubs have shut down in the last decade, about 15% of the total, and these closures are certain to continue unless politicians and governments create a fair tax system.

“Since pubs generate much higher taxes and many more jobs per pint or per meal than supermarkets do, tax equality would be beneficial for the wider economy, as well as the pub industry.”

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