Punch Taverns is expected this week to point to continued robust trading at its managed pubs as support for its controversial plan to demerge the business from the struggling tenanted division.
New chief executive Ian Dyson angered bondholders of the heavily indebted group last month by unveiling plans to split the business in two by the end of the summer, spinning off Spirit, the group's managed pubs business, into a separately-listed company.
Dyson, the former finance director at Marks & Spencer, who took over at the Punch helm last September, also revealed that he wants to sell more than 2,200 sites at Britain's second biggest pubs group, which is struggling under £3.5 billion of debt.
Punch, which announces its interim trading results on Tuesday, revealed in a recent trading update that Spirit's like-for-like sales shot up 8.6 per cent in its second trading quarter.
That compared with a 6 per cent sales fall in the tenanted business.
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