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.
INTERIMS
Mitchells & Butlers
INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE
James Halstead
INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS
Producer Price Index(GER) (07:00)
GMS
Wildhorse Energy Ltd. (DI)
FINALS
Blinkx, JZ Capital Partners Ltd
IMSS
Chesnara, Keller Group, Kentz Corporation Ltd.
SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE
Millennium & Copthorne Hotels
AGMS
Chesnara, Computacenter, Fresnillo, Huntsworth, JSC Kazkommertsbank GDR (Reg S), Keller Group, Kentz Corporation Ltd., Menzies(John), Michael Page International, Total Produce
FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE
Arbuthnot Banking Group, ARM Holdings, Clarke (T.), Downing Planned Exit VCT 2011 (General Shares), Downing Planned Exit VCT 2011 (Low Carbon Shares), Downing Planned Exit VCT 2011 (Structured Shares), Goldenport Holdings Inc., Johnson Service Group, MCB Finance Group, Millennium & Copthorne Hotels, Morgan Sindall Group, National Express Group, Norish Units, office2office, Petrofac Ltd., Powerflute Oyj (DI), ReThink Group, Secure Trust Bank, Spirax-Sarco Engineering
JH
Annual house price growth halves to 3.5% – ONS
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