Mitchells & Butlers Q1 sales rise but warns of tough environment

Pub group Mitchells and Butlers reported a rise in first-quarter sales as customers enjoyed their first Christmas free of Covid restrictions, but warned of a challenging outlook for the hospitality sector.

The company on Thursday, said strong trading over the festive season helped boost like-for-like sales in the year to date to 10.4%, with total sales growth of 13.3%. Sales in the five weeks to January 7 were up 23.9%.

“As expected, growth has significantly increased in the last five weeks due principally to last year being impacted by the emergence of the Omicron variant which resulted in a downturn in activity across much of the festive season,” the company said in a trading update.

“Comparing to the same period in 2019, the last full financial year before Covid-19, like-for like sales were up 8.9%, with 9.2% growth in the first 10 weeks followed by 8.5% growth in the last five weeks, despite key recent weeks being negatively impacted by industrial action.”

“However, we are mindful that the trading environment for the hospitality sector remains very challenging with inflationary costs putting sustained pressure both on the industry's margins and disposable income of our guests.”

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com