16 October 2025
If you are covering Whitbread’s latest financial results, please find below a comment from Mamta Valechha, consumer discretionary analyst at Quilter Cheviot:
“Whitbread provided a high year update that contained a bit of everything, but indicates strong current trading, with both revenue and profits ahead of consensus.
“In the UK, revenue per available room (RevPar) was down 1%, reflecting a soft first quarter (down 2.4%) followed by a return to growth in the second, up nearly 1%, with Premier Inn also outperforming the broader mid and economy market. Food and Beverage sales, meanwhile, declined by 11% in the first half, but turned less negative in the second quarter. Life for like sales were positive, showing that disruptions from the accelerated growth plan is lessening, which has included disposals and some restructuring of underperforming restaurants into new rooms.
“Elsewhere in Germany, RevPar sequentially slowed in Q2 compared to Q1 primarily due to a lower number of large events, but did also outperform the underlying market, driven by the increasing size of the estate, maturity of hotels and increased brand awareness. Losses continue to reduce as the estate matures and Whitbread reiterated that it remains on track to deliver a positive pre-tax profit this year, however, with a lower profit expectation than previously guide.
“Current trading remains encouraging with the forward booked position ahead of last year in both the UK and Germany, and RevPar accelerating to 3% in both regions. Another thing to note is that Whitbread also had a property revaluation, following the last one done in 2019. The revaluation saw an uplift of 11% at the midpoint (£5.5bn-£6.4bn from £4.9bn - £5.8bn). This provides a floor of £31 per share, net of debt, basically implying that currently investors are getting the operating business for close to nothing.
“So overall a mixed set of results from Whitbread with strong current trading undermined by some niggles. The shares have been strong into the results and while we did expect them to be down a bit, a near 10% decline seems like an overreaction.”
