Regent discounts to halt sales slide

Regent Inns has not escaped the tough climate of the high street and has introduced more discounting to re-affirm a competitive edge during weekday trading.

The company has this morning revealed a like-for-like sales decline of 7.4 per cent for the six months to January 3, 2004.

During the five-week Christmas and festive period, sales slipped further, with like-for-likes declining 9.9 per cent.

This was despite the Birmingham Jongleurs seeing record sales of £204,000 in the pre-Christmas trading week. The same unit also set a record for sales in one day - on New Year's Eve it took £94,000.

A review of its pricing policy has led to a "wider application" of its Two-for-One offers through its Walkabout estate, to include most alcoholic brands from 12pm to 10pm during the week, for January. This will continue for most of February.

This morning's statement said: "Although it is early days for our revised pricing policy, it has begun to achieve some success and our like-for-like sales for January showed an encouraging improvement over those both for the Christmas period and for the first half of the year."

Last year's rugby world cup provided some much-needed respite for its core Walkabout brand. The tournament produced £1m in extra sales in total and on the day of the final, when England beat Australia, gross average sales for the day were £23,900.

Six new Walkabouts opened during the period at Carlisle, Durham, Edinburgh, Hanley, Swindon and West Hampstead. The company also open one Jongleurs. The branded estate now comprises 67 venues - 48 Walkabouts, 17 Jongleurs and two Stone Houses. Average gross weekly sales across the estate are £43,800.

As a result of the collapse of Porter Black a number of pubs kicked back to Regent. The company said good progress had been made on these unbranded disposals - eight pubs were sold, contracts were exchanged on five more and a further three are under offer.

Pre-tax profits for the year rose 13 per cent to £7.7m on sales up 13.7 per cent to £61.8m. Bank debt was reduced by £7.5m to £64m. Regent has £41.7m of committed and unutilised bank facilities to take advantage of any opportunities to acquire more sites.