Mitchells & Butlers Q3 sales growth remains ahead of market

Pub group Mitchells & Butlers said on Thursday that Q3 growth had remained ahead of the market.

Mitchells & Butlers said like-for-like sales were up 5.7% year-to-date, with food sales up 6% and drink sales growing 5.3% year-on-year.

Looking forward, M&B warned that it anticipates net cost headwinds in the region of £55.0m as a result of increases in labour costs due to the statutory National Living Wage rise.

However, Mitchells & Butlers said this had been partly mitigated by deflation in energy costs, slowing food cost inflation and strong cost control at site level.

"Coupled with a robust sales performance we believe this will allow us to continue to rebuild margins and we remain very confident in the delivery of full-year consensus expectations," said Mitchells & Butlers.

As of 1130 BST, Mitchells & Butlers shares were down 0.33% at 300.0p.

Reporting by Iain Gilbert at Sharecast.com