Whitbread has posted a solid growth in profit for the year to 2 March, but said it needs to be cautious in the year ahead.
The Costa Coffee and Premier Inn owner saw its underlying pretax profit increase by 6.2% to £565.2m in the period.
Premier Inn saw total sales growth of 9%, with like-for-like sales up 2.3%, which helped underlying profit to rise by 7.4% to £468m.
Costa Coffee reported total sales growth of 10.7%, with UK like-for-like sales up by 2%, which drove a 53% increase in underlying profits to £158m.
Premier Inn’s sales growth benefited from the 3,816 new rooms it opened this year. The estate now stands at 68,081 bedrooms.
Its committed development pipeline now stands at 14,500 rooms, with a 2020 goal of 85,000 bedrooms. It also opened 25 new hotels in the period, taking total UK hotels up to 762.
Alison Brittain, chief executive, said: “In the year ahead we will continue to focus on organic growth and investing in our customer proposition. Whilst we are only seven weeks into our new financial year Premier Inn has had a good start to the year and Costa has also seen positive like-for-like sales growth, although we remain cautious and expect a tougher consumer environment than last year.”
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