Having recently announced that it is putting 32 pubs on the market, JD Wetherspoon has now revealed its preliminery results for the 53 weeks to 31st July, 2022.
Photograph: Unsplash/Greg Willson
There was a loss of £30.4m for the year, with like-for-like sales down 4.7%. However, sales rose by 10.1% in the nine weeks to 2nd October.
Chairman, Tim Martin, said: “The company has improved its prospects in a number of ways in recent financial years. We own an increasing percentage of freehold properties; the balance sheet has been strengthened; interest rates have been fixed at low levels until 2031; we have a large contingent of long-serving pub staff; and underlying sales are improving.
“However, as a result of the previously reported increases in labour and repair costs, and the potentially adverse
effects of rises in interest rates and energy costs on the economy, firm predictions are hard to make.”
He repeated a well-known criticism of the government’s lockdown strategy, and said more lockdowns or restrictions were “perhaps the biggest threat to the hospitality industry.
He added: “The other major threat to the hospitality industry is the huge and unjustifiable tax advantage that supermarkets enjoy.
“The hospitality industry pays far higher levels of VAT and business rates than supermarkets. This competitive disadvantage has had an increasingly debilitating impact on the hospitality industry and will undoubtedly result in long-term financial weakness vis a vis supermarkets, which will also be harmful to employees, the Treasury, and the overall economy.
“These caveats aside, in the absence of further lockdowns or restrictions, the company is cautiously optimistic, for
the reasons we have outlined, about future prospects.”
