COSTA Coffee owner Whitbread has cheered a jump in annual profit, but said it remains "cautious" amid forecasts for a tougher year ahead.
The group reported a 6.2 per cent rise in underlying pre-tax profits in the 52 weeks to March 2 to £565.2 million, while total revenue increased by 8.2 per cent to £3.1 billion.
It comes as its Premier Inn and restaurants business chalked up a 7.4 per cent rise in full-year underlying operating profit to £468m, while the Costa unit saw a 5.3 per cent rise to £158m.
However, chief executive Alison Brittain said the company is steadying itself for the months ahead.
It comes as retailers start to prepare for a pullback in consumer spending due to rising inflation, caused by the post-Brexit vote collapse of the pound.
"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," said Ms Brittain.
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 here