Wetherspoon boss hopeful despite record £155m losses
JD Wetherspoon has racked up nearly £190million of annual losses since the start of the Covid crisis.
The pub giant yesterday announced the biggest financial setback in its history after plunging £154.6million into the red in the 12 months to the end of July.
That was on top of the £34million deficit the year before. The only other annual loss was in 1984.
Wetherspoon founder and chairman Tim Martin used the results to again hit out at the Government over lockdowns and “draconian restrictions”.
He also slammed the different rates of VAT applied to pubs and supermarkets.
He said: “In spite of these obstacles, Wetherspoon is cautiously optimistic about the outcome for the financial year.”
Sales tumbled nearly 39 per cent to £772.6million last year. The company suffered from the fact that many of its pubs are in city centres which were often deserted for long spells in the pandemic.
Despite Covid curbs being eased, takings were still 8.7 per cent down on pre-pandemic levels in the first nine weeks of its new financial year.
The firm, like many, highlighted difficulties in getting enough staff. It paid out nearly £23million in staff bonuses and free shares in the year, with nearly 90 per cent going to workers in pubs. The results also revealed the company is planning to promote “worker directors” – pub or area managers – to its board.
Five Wetherspoon pubs opened during the year, but 16 were closed or sold, leaving it with an estate of 861.
And the company confirmed it would not be paying a final dividend.
Russ Mould, investment director at broker AJ Bell, said: “How much sympathy Wetherspoons will get for its complaints about the backdrop for the pubs industry is open to question as it serves up results which look so unappetising that most investors would probably want to send them back to the kitchen.
“Spoons has gone through a period of unprecedented disruption, which helps explain its record annual loss,
“But so have many of its independent peers and smaller chains which don’t have the same financial heft and scale to ride out the crisis.”