Strong growth from its core coffee and hotel brands helped Whitbread plc (LON:WTB) post a solid rise in full-year profit and revenue, broadly in-line with market expectations, although it remains cautious on the year ahead.
For the 52 weeks to 2 March 2017, the FTSE 100-listed firm saw its underlying pre-tax profit increase by 6.2% to £565.2mln, on total revenue of £3.106bn, up 8.2% on a year earlier.
Analysts at Credit Suisse had forecast Whitbread reporting adjusted pre-tax profit of £567mln, compared to £546mln the previous year, with revenue up to £3.1bn from £2.9bn.
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The group’s Premier Inn hotels chain saw total sales growth of 9.0%, with like-for-like sales up 2.3%, helping underlying operating profits rise by 7.4% to £468mln..
Its Costa Coffee chain reported total sales growth of 10.7%, with UK like-for-like sales store up 2.0%, driving a 5.3% increase in underlying operating profits to £158mln.
New hotels and coffee stores help drive growth
Alison Brittain, Whitbread’s chief executive, said: “Premier Inn's strong sales growth benefitted from the 3,816 gross new UK rooms we opened this year and the accelerated maturity of the c.9,000 rooms we have opened over the last two years.”
She added: “Costa opened 255 net new stores worldwide and we continue to roll out our successful and fast growing Costa travel formats. Costa Express had a great year installing over 1,500 machines of which 248 were in international markets.”
The Whitbread boss continued: “Whilst we are only seven weeks into our new financial year Premier Inn has had a good start to the year and Costa has also seen positive like for like sales growth, although we remain cautious and expect a tougher consumer environment than last year.”
The firm proposed a full year total dividend of 95.80p, up 6% on the 90.65p paid a year earlier.