Bass confirms brewing sale plan
Bass has confirmed its plans to sell off its brewing arm to concentrate on hotels, pubs and restaurants.
Chairman Sir Ian Prosser said today that a sale of Bass's brewing interests was the "more likely outcome" of the strategic review announced by the company in February. It is in confidential talks about selling the business.
Bass today announced pre-tax profits up by 25% at £324m for the 28 weeks ended 15 April. Turnover rose by 11.2% to £2.5b.
Operating profit at Bass Hotels & Resorts increased by 21%, while at its pubs and restaurants, operating profit grew by 31%. In brewing, the increase was only 3%.
Prosser said the rise in hotel profits was driven partly by a strong performance from Inter-Continental and partly by its Holiday Inn and Express hotels in the USA, which had outperformed their competitors.
During the period, Bass Hotels & Resorts completed two major acquisitions. In January it bought 59 hotels in the Asia Pacific region from the Southern Pacific Hotels Corporation. It also agreed to buy the remaining 90% of Bristol Hotels & Resorts.
Taking these acquisitions into account, the group expanded from 2,799 hotels with 457,000 rooms to 2,965 hotels with 480,000 rooms. Hotels turnover was $972m (£660m), an increase of 11.7%. Operating profit grew by 18.4% to $238m (£161m).
Profit at Inter-Continental was up by 18.4% to $90m (£61m). In North America, occupancy fell by 3.6 percentage points but room rate grew by 8.5%, leaving revenue per available room (revpar) up by 3.4%.
Overall, operating profit in America increased by 20.7% to $99m (£67m). In Europe, the Middle East and Africa operating profit was up by 15.4% to $30m (£20.3m) and in the Asia Pacific region it was up by 40% to $7m (£4.75m).
In pubs and restaurants, turnover rose by 21% to £894m, but like-for-like sales fell by 1.3%. Food sales increased by 11.5% to £175m, accounting for 24% of total sales compared with 22% last year.
by David Shrimpton david.shrimpton@rbi.co.uk
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