Pub chain Wetherspoon toasts profits rise and Olympics boost

The company, which has over 800 pubs across Britain, said pre-tax profits before exceptional items for the year to July 29 was £72.4m, up from £66.8m in 2011.

Increased food and bar sales pushed revenue in the period up 9.3 per cent to almost £1.2bn, with like for like sales up 3.2 per cent. Including a 53rd week, pre-tax profits grew by 8.4 per cent.

The chain, which opened its first Wetherspoon pub in 1979, said underlying sales in the six weeks to September 9 had risen 8.4 per cent after a strong performance during the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, although it did not expect to sustain that level of growth.

Wetherspoon has been one of the better performing pub firms throughout the economic downturn because of its value-for-money offers but it remains a staunch critic of the government’s taxation rules which it says favours supermarkets over pubs.

“The pub industry has been fleeced by the government, in the last decade and a half,” said chairman Tim Martin, who will open 25 pubs in the new year to July.

“Pubs pay 20 per cent VAT in respect of food sales, while supermarkets pay virtually nothing. This enables supermarkets to cross-subsidise their alcoholic drinks’ prices, resulting in large numbers of pub closures and also applying enormous pressure to those pubs which remain open.”

Shares in the FTSE 250 firm, which said it expected a “reasonable outcome” for the 2012/13 financial year, closed at 460.6 pence on Thursday, up 19 per cent on a year ago, valuing the business at around £586m.