Pub giant Marston's says it enjoyed a strong Christmas and festive season as the pub remains an "affordable treat" for consumers.
The Wolverhampton-based group said sales on its five key festive dates were up by more than a quarter on the previous year.
Meanwhile southern rival City Pub Group (CPG) also hailed strong Christmas and World Cup sales but warned that rail strikes were having an impact on its businesses.
Marston's runs hotels, restaurants and pubs across the country. In a trading update today for the 16-week period to January 21, 2023, the group said like-for-like sales were up 12.9% on the previous year where trading was hit by the impact of the Omicron variant.
It said that for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, like-for-like sales were up 26% on 2021 and up 12.9% on the 2019/20 festive period.
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The group added that its electricity costs were hedged until September 2023, the end of its financial year, while its gas price is fixed until the end of March 2025.
CEO Andrew Andrea said: "We have continued to see positive sales momentum through the festive season and into the New Year, with particularly strong demand on the key Christmas and New Year trading days.
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"Whilst we still have certain cost challenges to navigate in 2023, we are well-positioned to continue to progress our strategy and are encouraged by the level of consumer resilience experienced to date. The pub clearly remains an affordable treat which is attractive to consumers, and we continue to see good traction from those sites within our portfolio which have been converted to our Signature format.
"Marston’s pub estate is well-invested, and our geography and proposition lends itself to benefit from underlying consumer trends. Whilst still early in the New Year, trading momentum continues to build, and our primary focus remains to meet our strategic goals of achieving £1bn sales and reducing our debt to below £1bn with all the subsequent benefits that both of those milestones will bring to our shareholders."
City Pub Group, which runs 44 pubs in Wales and southern England, also reported today that sales were up 7.8% in the last three months of 2022, compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
It said that over 2022, its annual turnover rose by nearly two thirds as Covid restrictions ended.
CPG added: “The performance would have been even better had it not been for the rail strikes, especially those towards the end of the year, where we estimate lost revenue to be in the region £750,000, or 3.5% of revenue for the fourth quarter.”
The group also said energy costs rose “substantially” in 2022. While they have since fallen they are still at historically high levels.