JD Wetherspoon: Profit rockets as Tim Martin takes jab at tax rises
JD Wetherspoon has reported another successful quarter after outperforming the wider hospitality market again, although boss Tim Martin has warned on the effects of taxing the sector too hard.
The pub giant told markets this morning that like-for-like sales rose 5.1 per cent year on year, while revenue rose 4.5 per cent to £2.12bn.
Profit before tax rise 10.1 per cent to £81m, and earnings per share rose 4.5 per cent to 50.8p.
Chair Tim Martin hailed a good quarter for JD Wetherspoon, with the cheap boozer once again outperforming the market.
The latest CGA RSM Hospitality Business Tracker for August said industry like-for-like sales were per cent, meaning August was the “36th month in a row that Wetherspoon has outperformed the tracker”, he said.
But Martin warned that cost increases to national insurance and labour rates, as well as the new Extended Producer Responsibility tax, will “undoubtedly add to underlying inflation in the UK economy… although Wetherspoon, as always, will endeavour to keep price increases to a minimum.”
JD Wetherspoon expects a “reasonable” outcome for the financial year, although cautioned that government-led cost increases in areas such as energy “may have a bearing on the outcome”.
‘The UK only needs 1000 companies like Wetherspoons’
Martin said that the In the last financial year, Wetherspoon, its customers and employees generated a total of £838m of taxes for the UK government.
“The total tax raised by the government in the last financial year was £858.9 billion…. In other words, the country only needs about one thousand companies like Wetherspoon and no one else would have to pay any taxes at all,” he said.
Martin has traditionally been vocal in the company’s financial statement, with Martin calling on Starmer to reduce pub taxes earlier this year.
Along with walking back last Autumn’s tax raid, Martin has previously called for a ‘rebalancing’ of tax treatment between pubs and supermarkets, arguing that supermarkets’ lack of VAT allows them to subsidise the selling price of beer.
He also took the opportunity with JD’s latest set of results to take aim at “pseudoscientific publications” espousing the view that “even one drink is bad for you”.
“This argument seems to ignore the reality that the longest-living nations all seem to allow alcohol consumption,” he said.