Wetherspoon's maintains guidance as like-for-like sales continue to grow

Wetherspoon's said on Wednesday that year-to-date like-for-like sales had increased 6.7% and total sales by 7.4%, while for the ten weeks to 7 July, like-for-like sales rose 6.9% and total sales were up by 6.6%.

On the back of the higher sales, the FTSE 250-traded company stated it remained in "a sound financial position", with net debt at the end of its current financial year expected to be about £745m.

Since the beginning of the financial year, Wetherspoon's had opened five new pubs and disposed of nine.

No further openings were expected in the current financial year and at this stage, it noted that about £3m of exceptional, non-cash losses were expected for the year, mainly as a result of pub disposals below the value in the group's balance sheet.

Wetherspoon's also revealed that so far in its current trading year, the company had spent £71m on buying the freeholds of pubs of which it was previously the tenant and had bought back £5.4m worth of its shares.

As of 0825 BST, JD Wetherspoon shares had picked up 3.48% to 1,457p.