Barclays has cut its target price on Whitbread (LON:WTB), ahead of next week’s full year results from the Premier Inn owner.
The bank kept its rating on Whitbread at ‘overweight’ and reduced its target price to 5,200p from 5,500p.
READ: Morgan Stanley checks out of Whitbread on signs of weaker hotel demand
Next Tuesday, the FTSE 100 group will announce its first annual results since the £3.9bn sale of its Costa Coffee chain to Coca-Cola, which was announced last summer and completed on 3 January.
Barclays analysts, as part of a wider note on the European leisure sector on Thursday, trimmed their earnings per share forecasts for the year to 193p from 195p. For next year they also lowered their EPS expectations to 222p from 238p.
The City analyst consensus is for revenue of £2.09bn, underlying profit before tax of £477m and EPS of 204.6p. A year ago, with Costa still included, the group reported underlying PBT of £591mln.
Whitbread boss Alison Brittain recently set out plans for the company to use the Costa cash to buy back a £2.5bn of shares and accelerate growth at Premier Inn.
Next week’s results should include recent developments in Brittain’s plans to double the hotel network to more than 170,000 rooms around the world, with a focus on the UK and the newer market of Germany, where it has a single hotel.