Whitbread cheers with full-year outlook, strong Q4 performance

27th Feb 2014 07:50

- FY results to be at top end of expectations- Christmas drives strong Q4 performance- Bank facility extended by two yearsWhitbread is on track to report full-year results at the top end of expectations, the hotels and restaurants company said Thursday. In the 50 weeks to February 13th, its like-for-like sales climbed 4%, driven by its Costa and Premier Inn chains, which rose 5.8% and 4.7%, respectively. Total sales in the period leapt 13.2%, with Costa soaring 20.1% and Premier Inn up 13.3%. In the 11 weeks to the same date, total like-for-like sales climbed 6.8%, while total sales climbed 14%. Andy Harrison, Chief Executive of Whitbread, said: "Whitbread delivered a strong fourth quarter [...] driven by a particularly good Christmas trading period and, to a lesser extent, favourable weather comparatives in January.""The strong fourth quarter [...] puts us on track to deliver full-year results towards the top end of current expectations."In the 50-week period, Premier Inn saw its revenue per available room (revpar) climb 5.1%, while total room nights sold by 9.7% to 14.3m. Total occupancy was 78.0%, up 1.5% points on last year. Costa's UK Retail sales grew by 17.6% to £622.9m, with equity stores delivering like-for-like sales growth of 5.8%. It opened 312 new stores during the period both in the UK and internationally. Financially, the group remained in a strong financial position, having signed an amendment to its £650m syndicated bank facility, extending its maturity by two years to November 2018 and introducing an option to extend it by a further two years. In the first few minutes of trade, the share price climbed more than 2% to 4,282p. NR