SHARES in Greene King, owner of Scottish brewer Belhaven, rose 1.8% after its managed pubs arm posted a 5.1% rise in like-for-like sales despite pressure from poor summer weather.
The company, headed by chief executive Rooney Anand, operates 105 directly managed and 250 leased and tenanted outlets in Scotland. It has benefited in recent years from offering more food in its pubs and attracting more families.
Although the figures for the first 18 weeks of its financial year showed a slowdown from the 7.1% posted for the first few weeks of the financial year, it remained ahead of the 4% to 4.5% range management have said they are expecting for the full year.
Greene King, which bought Belhaven for £187 million in 2005, said in its managed pubs business like-for-like food sales for the 18 weeks to September 2 were up 5.2%, while drinks sales were up 5% and room sales grew 4.9%.
In its leased and tenanted arm, average earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation was up a higher-than-expected 3.5% over the first 16 weeks of the period although earnings in the core estate were down 0.5%.
Greene King has been giving "price support" to pubs in its leased and tenanted estate that face strong competition.
Around 180 pubs in Scotland have been given access to special deals allowing them to sell lager for as little as £1.99 a pint as well as special deals on wine and soft drinks.
Belhaven was integrated with the rest of the business in the last year which Greene King said had given it greater pricing power.
The Olympics had a minimal effect on the business's performance, Greene King said. It said that the City and West End in London were "generally quiet" but trading in the capital's suburbs was "noticeably stronger".
It said that beer volumes were up 0.4%.
The company said: "We believe underlying trading trends across the business have been maintained through the summer, despite the disappointing weather.
"This is encouraging for the rest of the year, although we expect consumer confidence to remain subdued."
Greene King's shares closed up 10p or 0.8% at 575.7p.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article