Strategic highlights
- Early signs of improved volume momentum in our Leisure business
- Fundamentally improved value positioning and food offer in Frankie & Benny’s
- Restaurant technology roll-out complete to facilitate serving customers better
- Healthy pipeline of opportunities to advance growth in Pubs and Concessions
- Good progress on cost reduction
- Team strengthened
Financial highlights*
- Like-for-like sales down 2.2%
- Total sales down 1.9% on a 26 week comparable basis; down 7.1% on a statutory basis
- Adjusted1 profit before tax of £25.5m (2016: £36.6m). Statutory profit before tax of £2.8m (2016: loss of £22.5m)
- Exceptional charge of £22.7m (2016: £59.1m)
- Adjusted1 EBITDA of £44.3m (2016: £59.6m)
- Adjusted1 EPS of 10.0p (2016: 14.3p). Statutory EPS of 0.6p (2016: loss per share 11.2p)
- Continued strong free cash flow of £35.1m (2016: £35.8m)
- Net bank debt of £19.3m (2016: £35.6m)
- Interim dividend maintained at 6.8p per share, reflecting the Board’s confidence in the plan
- Current trading in line with our expectations; we continue to expect to deliver an adjusted PBT outcome for the full-year in line with current market expectations
Andy McCue, Chief Executive Officer, commented:
“We have made good progress against our strategic initiatives outlined in March. Our Leisure customers are enjoying a better value, higher quality product; our growth plans for our Pubs and Concessions businesses are advancing well and we have made good progress in delivering cost efficiencies. I’ve been impressed with our colleagues’ receptiveness to change and thank them for their contribution to stabilising the business.”
* The highlights reflect the statutory 26 week period in 2017 versus the statutory 27 week period in 2016 unless stated otherwise
1 Adjusted reflects pre-exceptional costs and is further defined in the glossary at the end of this report