Aastha Agnihotri
Whitbread's profit rose about 14 percent in the first half as new openings and growing demand at both its Premier Inn hotels and the Costa Coffee chain helped send sales up strongly.
Whitbread, Britain's biggest hotel and coffee shop operator, said it remained on track to deliver full-year results in line with expectations.
Shares in company rose as much as 3 percent, making it the top FTSE-100 gainer on Tuesday on the London Stock Exchange.
The group, which is expanding its presence in the Middle East, South East Asia, Germany and India, said it expected to open around 50 new stores in China but added that there had been a "slight softening" in its performance due to the slowdown in the country's economy.
"We have got a strong store network, not just in the major cities but in some of the Tier 2 cities as well ... Chinese consumers love Costa," Chief Executive Andy Harrison told Reuters.
Whitbread has grown rapidly in recent years due to demand from cost-conscious customers for affordable hotels and takeaway coffee, which has driven growth at its Costa chain.
The company increased its expansion targets for both its businesses earlier this year, with a focus on London for Premier Inn and an overseas boost for Costa, which now has a presence in 29 countries outside the UK.
Whitbread said its underlying pretax profit rose to 291.3 million pounds in the six months to Aug. 27, from 256 million pounds a year earlier.
Revenue rose 11.3 percent to 1.43 billion pounds, reflecting sales growth of 12.6 percent and 16.2 percent at Premier Inn and Costa Coffee respectively.
The company also raised its interim dividend to 28.5 pence from 25.2 pence last year.
Whitbread shares were up in early trading.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here