Whitbread reports hike in like-for-like sales

18th Jun 2013 07:10

UK hotel and restaurant group Whitbread reported a 3.1 per cent rise in total like-for-like sales for the 13 weeks to May 30th. The results were driven by a 8.0% like-for-like growth in sales at its Costa coffee chain and a 2.7% rise in like-for-like sales at its Premier Inn family of hotels.Andy Harrison, Chief Executive of Whitbread, said the results were in line with expectations. "Our plans for profitable organic growth are well established which, combined with our strong focus on returns, should create further substantial shareholder value," he said.In London, Premier Inn sales grew by 19.9% as the company increased the number of rooms available by 20.6% year-on-year.Whitbread opened 794 hotel rooms and three joint site restaurants in the quarter and has plans to open around 4,000 rooms and 10 joint site restaurants for the full-year. Restaurants delivered flat like-for-like sales in the quarter with cold weather substantially impacting sales at the start of the year, offset by an improved performance over the last few weeks.Costa's UK retail sales jumped by 20.1% to £151.5m, with equity stores delivering like-for-like sales of 8.0%, supported by cold weather at the beginning of the quarter.Costa Enterprises, including Costa Express, delivered system sales of £67.1m, up 32.6%. The group opened 39 net new UK stores in the quarter, 36 in UK retail and three in Costa Enterprises. Internationally, system sales grew by 21.3% to £63.3m and the firm opened 21 net new stores including 18 in China where there are now 271 stores."We plan to open around 300 net new stores and have raised our target to 750 Costa Express units in the full year," the company said.RD