Struggling pubs group Mitchells and Butlers, in common with its peers, has been wrestling with rising costs and a challenging consumer environment, but unlike its peers has been doing so without the leadership of a Chief Executive Officer.
"We expect the current trading update to be lacklustre given recent weather and tough comparatives," Panmure Gordon said.
Like-for-like (LFL) sales in the nine weeks to January 21st, 2012, were up 6.5% on the corresponding period a year earlier, pushing the LFL sales improvement in the first 17 weeks of the group's financial year up to 4.4%. "However, the group cautioned that underlying LFL sales in January were closer to circa 1%," notes Panmure Gordon, " although we believe that partly reflects difficult comps [comparative figures]."
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The broker reckons it will be another year before the group can contemplate resuming dividend payments. It is forecasting flat earnings of £63m profit before tax and earnings per share of 11.3p.
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