Spirit sale options remain open, says Karen Jones

Despite growing speculation surrounding the future of Spirit, chief executive Karen Jones maintained last week that all options - including an IPO or a sale of the group - remained open.

Speaking as the managed pub company released fourth quarter figures for its "borrower" estate, Ms Jones dismissed suggestions that she and her management team had been sidetracked by rumours of the group's likely break-up.

"My and my team's focus has been to get the business into shape and that's been very much the case," she said. "All the options that we had before remain open to us going forward, whether that is an IPO, a sale or [us making] acquisitions."

With most observers privately suggesting the group's days in its present form are numbered Spirit's financial adviser, Merrill Lynch, is understood to have told prospective bidders to make a serious offer for the managed pub giant by the middle of November or walk away.

Following a number of recent unsolicited approaches for Spirit, which operates the Chef & Brewer and Barras chains together with a portfolio of unbranded pubs, the November deadline imposed by Merrills aims to flush out the serious contenders from those merely testing the waters.

Meanwhile Spirit's fourth quarter results, which revealed the group had gained drinks market share in a declining market, "were immensely pleasing" and the result of "well laid and well constructed plans".

For the three months to August 20, net sales in Spirit's bonded estate - which comprises 1,066 pubs - totalled £188.5m. Like-for-like sales grew 3.4 per cent, food sales rose 6.9 per cent rise while drink volumes rose 2.4 per cent. Overall group sales growth was 3.9 per cent for the quarter.

"A lot of work has gone into our estate over the last 20 months to get to a point where we can drive good top and bottom line growth," Ms Jones said.

"In quarter's one and two we were in the pain stage, getting the pricing right and so on," she added. There was more to Spirit's pricing policy than discounting, she said, highlighting the group has raised retail selling prices by 1.8 per cent in the past few months.

Structurally Ms Jones said last month's sale of 178 pubs to the Tattershall Group was "the last piece in the jigsaw and we're now where we want to be, which is based around designing and delivering better food and drink offers and maintaining this momentum", she said.