Young's managed pubs see 4% lfl growth

10 July, 2012

Young’s, the London-based pub group, saw like-for-like sales in its managed pubs grow 4.0% over the last 13 weeks, with total sales up 10.1% on the same time last year.

The group, which includes Geronimo pubs, said it had benefitted from strong trading during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations as well as last year’s investment in its estate.

Numis analyst Simon French said the results suggested that trading in the last six weeks was even stronger, ahead by as much as 11%.

Peach Factory's Peter Martin said that pubs and bars in general had benefitted from the strong TV sporting calendar, including the European football championships, during June.

But he added that the Youngs performance also reflected a trend detected by the Coffer Peach Business Tracker, the industry's sales monitor, which saw pubs generally trading more strongly than casual dining, and with London pubs doing particularly well.

Coffer Peach Tracker figures for June will be released next week.

Youngs said it was looking forward with confidence too. It said it was well prepared for the Olympics and bookings in its hotels were strong. The Calf in Stratford, which opened last month as a pop-up close to the Olympic Stadium, was trading well and The King’s Head, Roehampton and the Wheatsheaf, Borough Market would both re-open in the Autumn.