By Anthony O. Goriainoff
Whitbread PLC said Tuesday that its pretax loss narrowed for the first half of fiscal 2022 as revenue rose, and that the board was confident in returning to prepandemic U.K. profit margins.
The FTSE 100-listed hotel-and-restaurant company said that sales recovery was ahead of expectations and that although a number of uncertainties remain, U.K. like-for-like revenue per available room run rate had the potential to reach full recovery sometime in 2022.
Whitbread said that for the six months ended Aug. 27, pretax loss was 19.3 million pounds ($26.6 million) compared with a pretax loss of GBP724.7 million for the first half of fiscal 2021. The company said it benefited from a GBP28.6 million profit in property disposal and a GBP8.7 million VAT claim.
Adjusted pretax loss--a key metric which strips out exceptional and other one-off items--was GBP56.6 million compared with a loss of GBP367.4 million the year before.
Revenue for the period was GBP661.6 million compared with GBP250.8 million the year-prior period, and consensus of GBP682.1 million, taken from FactSet and based on five analysts' forecasts.
The company, which owns the budget Premier Inn hotel chain, said first-half total U.K. sales were 1.3% ahead of the same period the year before, with accommodation sales up 7.9% and occupancy at 81.2%.
Write to Anthony O. Goriainoff at anthony.orunagoriainoff@dowjones.com