Bury St Edmunds: Greene King on track to meet full-year expectations

PUBS and brewing group Greene King said today it remained on track to meet market expectations for its full-year results.

In a pre-close trading update, covering the 51 weeks to April 21, the Bury St Edmunds-based group said like-for-like sales in its key retail division were up 2.2% overall, with food up 2.7% and rooms 3.1% ahead.

Average earnings per pub in its tenanted, leased and franchised pubs division, Pub Partners, were 4.6% up after 48 weeks while core brand own-brewed beer volumes were 0.8% up at the 51-week stage.

Chief executive Rooney Anand said: “Although trading conditions were more demanding in the second half of our financial year, our business has once again demonstrated its resilience and we have delivered good progress across all businesses.

“Our commitment to delivering industry-leading value, service and quality to our customers, supported by our strong retail brands and South East bias has driven another year oflife-for-like (LFL) sales growth and margin expansion.

“Easter was particularly strong this year. We sold a record 700,000 meals over the four-day period and delivered LFL cover growth of 5.2%. This drove LFL sales growth of 7.1%.”

He added: “Alongside strong underlying growth, we have made further strategic progress, adding an expected 33 new retail sites during the year, taking the retail estate to 987 sites by the year-end, and reducing the size of the Pub Partners’ estate by 108 sites to 1,272 sites.

“Despite the impact on trading and profitability caused by the extreme weather conditions in the second half of the year, we expect to meet external full year expectations for profit, cashflow and balance sheet.”

Greene King is due to announce its results for the 52 weeks to April 28 on June 27.