Dunstable / UK. (wbp) British Whitbread PLC reports its trading performance for the 13 weeks to 01 June 2017. «We have had a good start to the year, with first quarter sales growth of 7.6 percent, in line with our expectations. Our continued drive to grow and innovate in our core UK businesses, focus on our strengths internationally and build capabilities to support long-term growth, combined with our ongoing cost efficiency programme, gives us confidence that we will make further good progress this year», Whitbread’s Chief Executive Alison Brittain said.
«Premier Inn continued to win overall market share with strong sales growth of 9.2 percent as we benefited from a resilient hotel market and the contribution from the approximately 9’000 rooms we opened over the last two years, which are maturing well. Our digital development team continued to innovate for our customers and we launched our personalised business to business booking platform that helped to maintain our direct bookings at 94 percent of sales. We were pleased that total UK occupancy was up compared to the first quarter last year at 79.2 percent».
«Costa Coffee sales grew 8.7 percent with UK equity like for like growth of 1.1 percent and a good performance in our expanding travel and drive thru channels. We are focused on executing on our initiatives, rolling out «Cold Brew» in over 200 of our stores and our latest summer Frostino and cooler drinks have just gone on sale this month. We also successfully introduced our new breakfast range towards the end of the quarter, with further new food ranges launching throughout the year. Costa Express continued its expansion with 300 net installations during the quarter. In May we officially opened our new Roastery giving us capacity to grow over the next 20 years and provide us with an industry-leading centre for coffee innovation».
«Internationally, in Germany our Premier Inn hotel in Frankfurt is performing well and we continue to develop our current committed pipeline of five hotels. Meanwhile, in Costa, we are seeing good progress in China with positive like for like sales growth. We aim to accelerate the development of our international businesses in these attractive markets and continue to look for opportunities to grow more».
«In line with our property strategy we completed the sale and leaseback of our 247 room hotel in Shoreditch, with proceeds of 51 million GBP representing a good yield of just under 4 percent, reflecting the strength of Whitbread’s covenant. We expect proceeds of around 100 to 150 million GBP from sale and leaseback transactions».
«We have a clear plan to deliver growth in our existing estate and remain on track to open approximately 4’200 hotel rooms, 230 to 250 Costa coffee shops and install approximately 1’250 Costa Express machines».