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More coffee for Whitbread, but Premier Inn the star as company updates on trading

Last updated: 02:22 02 Mar 2011 EST, First published: 03:22 02 Mar 2011 EST

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Whitbread (LON:WTB) is broadening its coffee offering with the £59.5 million acquisition of Coffee Nation, the self service operation.

The owner of the Costa chain is targeting 3,000 self service outlets, up from the current 900 owned by Coffee Nation. 

The announcement came as Whitbread updated on trading. It said total sales grew 12.4 percent in the 11 weeks to February 17, while underlying revenues grew by 3.9 per cent.

Star performer was the Premier Inns chain of budget hotels which posted a 5 per cent rise in like-for-like sales. Premier has cut room prices to as little as £29 a night, to woo leisure and business travellers trading down from four and five star hotels.

"Our like for like sales are good especially in a challenging economic environment and against tougher comparatives," chief executive Andy Harrison said.

Whitbread, which runs nearly 600 hotels and close to 1,200 coffee shops in Britain, said it anticipated its full year results would be in line with market expectations.

Whitbread has been a consistently strong performer throughout the economic downturn because of the value-for-money focus of Premier Inn and Costa Coffee being viewed as affordable luxury by consumers.


 

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