Operation of hotels, restaurants and coffee shops,Whitbread Group Plc is a UK based hospitality company, managing several popular brands, including Premier Inn, Table Table, Brewers Fayre, Taybarns, Beefeater and Costa Coffee. The company�s headquarters are based in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. The company was founded as a brewery by Samuel Whitbread and Thomas Shewell in 1799 but, after a long history of brewing, the company decided in 2001 to sell all its breweries and brewing interests to Interbrew. Today the group employs over 40,000 people and serves 10 million customers every month in over 2,000 outlets across the UK.

,Final Ex-Dividend Date MAY-2011

Whitbread PLC is the UK's largest hotel and restaurant group operating market-leading businesses in budget hotels, restaurants and coffee shops. Its well-loved brands are Premier Inn, Beefeater, Brewers Fayre, Table Table, Taybarns and Costa.


Whitbread PLC employs over 40,000 people globally and serves over 11 million customers every month in over 2,000 outlets across the UK.


Whitbread has outlined five-year growth milestones (to 2015/16) to increase the number of Premier Inn UK rooms by nearly 50% to at least 65,000, add 80-100 new Restaurants and to nearly double the size of Costa with global system sales of £1.3bn and 3,500 stores worldwide.

Preliminary Results

Financial Results
· Group total sales growth of 8.2% and underlying profit before tax up 6.2% to £565.2 million
· Premier Inn total sales growth of 9.0%, and like for like sales2 up 2.3%
· Costa total sales growth of 10.7%, system sales up 12.7% and UK equity like for like sales2 up 2.0%
· Group return on capital3 of 15.2% (2015/16: 15.3%)
· Cash generated from operations of £860.1 million, which funded cash capital investment of £609.8 million and a proposed full year dividend up 6.0% to 95.80 pence

Alison Brittain, Chief Executive, said:

"Whitbread has had another year of strong growth and continued investment with total Group sales increasing 8.2% to £3.1 billion and underlying basic earnings per share increasing by 6.0%, demonstrating the strength of our core brands. Total basic earnings per share increased by 7.3%.

In 2016/17 we made good progress in delivering on our three strategic priorities: to grow and innovate in our core UK businesses; to focus on our strengths to grow internationally; and to build the capability and infrastructure to support long-term growth.

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. We delivered high customer satisfaction by leading the market on quality and value, achieved occupancy of over 80% with record levels of direct bookings at 94%, all of which supported our strong return on capital.

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. We are innovating to drive our sales growth and are pleased with the investment we are making to introduce 'finer' coffee concepts, leveraging our new state of the art Roastery and delivering fresher food that our customers will enjoy later this year.

Internationally, in Germany we grew our hotel pipeline to five hotels and our Frankfurt hotel received great guest feedback. We continue to have success with our profitable joint venture in the Middle East while our phased withdrawal from South East Asia is on plan. China remains an exciting platform of growth for Costa and we have a clear plan to enhance our business. We have launched five new concept stores, the results of which give us further confidence that we can capitalise on this market opportunity and grow to significant scale.

During the year we continued to strengthen our capabilities to support our long-term, growth, including developing the senior team with a number of new hires and promotions. In November we announced a £150 million cost efficiency programme to help offset investment and sector cost pressures. We have made good progress this year in areas such as procurement, supplier consolidation and labour scheduling, which has helped maintain margins.

In the year ahead we will continue to focus on organic growth and investing in our customer proposition. This, together with our efficiency programme and disciplined capital management gives us confidence in delivering another year of good progress, in line with overall expectations. 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.

In the longer term we remain confident that, with our significant structural growth opportunities, the power of our brands and the investments we are making, we will continue to deliver strong returns and sustainable long-term growth for our shareholders".

Richard Baker, Chairman, said:

"Whitbread is one of Britain's longest established and most successful companies and celebrates 275 years in business this year. We are very aware of our responsibilities to ensure that this great British company continues to thrive and, as such, we are focused on driving growth while managing risk and demonstrating excellent corporate governance. We operate a conservative approach to the management of our balance sheet and this provides us with a solid base in turbulent and changing times. Our strong cash flow generation has enabled us to increase the full year dividend by 6.0% to 95.80 pence".

Panmure Gordon Hold 3,989.00 3,800.00 3,800.00 Retains

been commending this for some time on the "other thread" that i frequent

for a few months it has looked a good defensive stock for all sorts of reasons which surely do not need spelling out
today's figures and the market reaction vindicate that

Interims:

Whitbread profit up 20%

Whitbread booked a 20% rise in first-half profits after its opening of new hotel rooms helped boost revenue.

Pre-tax profit rose to £316m, up from £264m, after revenue jumped 7.4%.

Much of the growth in revenue came from the Premier Inn hotels business, for which the company opened more than 2,000 new rooms.

Like-for-like revenue growth at the Costa coffee chain, however, slowed to 0.6%.

Whitbread declared an interim dividend of 31.4p, up 5% on the previous year.

"Despite the well known short-term economic uncertainty, our performance in the first half was good and we expect to meet expectations for the full year," the company said.

StockMarketWire.com

possibly worth getting in for a quick trade
fall of 3% looks ridiculous against these very good results

Liberum Capital Hold 3,804.00 4,150.00 4,150.00 Reiterates

First half results from Whitbread showed evidence of a bit of a summer slowdown, with revenues at its Premier Inn hotels and Costa Coffee arms both softening.

This could be the reason for the drop Alf.

£34 coming soon !!!

CD - how often are your forecasts of gloom and doom for stocks X and Y ever proved accurate and within even a couple of months?

Ouch.

Numis Hold 3,752.00 - 4,100.00 Reiterates

Citigroup Sell 3,704.50 - 3,200.00 Retains

cynic Send an email to cynic View cynic's profile - 24 Oct 2017 10:59 - 63 of 67

CD - how often are your forecasts of gloom and doom for stocks X and Y ever proved accurate and within even a couple of months?


You will have to excuse Alf these days CD as he spends most of his time on holiday...he also seems to have gone blind.

3700 remains a long way north of 3400 and nof course my question to CD was ignored

Stan - talking of being blind, have you noticed the relative performance of BATS and IMB of late?

No why should I?

Holding(s) in Company

sp has got excited once more, but no obvious reason and volume not exciting either

has there been a chunky bear position in this stock?
if so, it may be that the squeeze is being applied, as sp is now at its highest since 23/10 when it was already heading sharply downward

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banked a very nice profit at 3959 from nowhere on my trading position
still hold in my sipp