Mitchells & Butlers credits profit growth to innovation

Mitchells & Butlers has reported growth in like-for-like operating profit to £151m for the first half of 2019.

The group, which operates brands including Ember Inns, Harvester and All Bar One, credited the performance on instilling a more commercial culture and introducing new innovation to the business.

Like-for-like sales growth for H1 2019 was 4.1% up at £1.2b.

Chief executive Phil Urban (pictured) said: "This is a strong set of results, demonstrating that we continue to build momentum in the business, delivering sales growth, sustained market outperformance and a return to operating profit growth all while reducing leverage to below four times.

"This strong performance comes from the progress we continue to make in our three priority areas: building a more balanced business; instilling a more commercial culture; and driving an innovation agenda.

"Success in this highly competitive market is dependent on a continuous stream of improvements, and that is what we are delivering with many small advances at site level, driving significant benefits in aggregate. We will maintain our focus on these initiatives, which we believe are transforming the business."