Snow freezes out trading across major pub operators

Last month's blizzards predictably kept swathes of pubgoers at home, judging by the sales figures of a number of large managed on-trade and restaurant operators.

The monthly Coffer Peach Business Tracker - which is produced by the Peach Factory research outfit in partnership with accountants KPMG, investment bank UBS and property specialists Coffer Group and which analyses the sales patterns across 17 major chains including Mitchells & Butlers and Whitbread - reported that trading was down 4.2 per cent in December, compared with the same month in 2009.

And the picture of trading is likely to be repeated elsewhere, according to one Business Tracker member. Noting that total year-on-year sales, including new openings, fell three per cent - down from a five per cent positive figure a year ago - Jonathan Leinster, head of European leisure and tobacco research at UBS, said: "We believe that the listed pub companies are outperforming other contributors to the index, nonetheless we expect the trading updates [that begin this week] will be poor."

Peach Factory's Peter Martin said: "Taken together, figures for the two weeks of Christmas and New Year were actually ahead of 2009 as customers were determined to make it out of their homes, with the week after Christmas and including New Year particularly strong."

"However, operators were still unable to make up for the snow-induced sales losses earlier. The first three weeks of the five-week month had seen negative sales figures across the market, with the first week seeing a double-digit dip.

"Heavy snow in the busiest weeks of the year is bad news, and way more significant than for the weeks lost to snow in January 2010, which experienced a five per cent sale drop, as January is always a quiet month," he added.

Total sales, which include new openings, were down 3.4 per cent. The December drop ended a run of six consecutive months of positive same-store sales being recorded up to and including November.

Trevor Watson, a director at property agent Davis Coffer Lyons, part of the Coffer Group, said: "The results have been affected by some operators bringing in price increases early in order to counter the effect of the hike in VAT in January as well as major snow disruption over an unprecedented period in the key trading weeks of the year."

Richard Hathaway, head of Travel, Leisure and Tourism at KPMG added: "These figures show that the sector's leading operators had a decent festive season and clawed back some of the ground lost to the snow. But, just like retailers, we will probably see in due course that results across the sector for December, as with 2010 as a whole, were a mixed bag.

"The strongest brands and best operators continue to take market share in what remains a fragile consumer economy. Further pressures from the recent VAT increase and weak confidence will drive further differentiation in performance between the winners and losers."