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Authoritative Independent Monthly Share Selections Using Technical & Fundamental Analysis

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Whitbread - On track to have 75,000 rooms by 2018

December 2013

Investing in shares may lose you all or some of your money. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Some of the shares recommended here may be small company shares, which can be relatively illiquid and hard to trade and this makes such shares more risky than other investments.

  • Epic Code:
  • WTB
  • Price:
  • 3404p
A lovely surge in the shares has taken them above £34 for the first time after Whitbread announced strong first half results. These showed turnover rising 12% to £1,144m while pretax profit increased almost 13% to £216m and eps rose 12% to 90.9p. Strong cash flow reduced net debt from £471m at end February to £430m. Its mainstay, hotels & restaurants, grew revenues 9% to £767m and operating profit 8% to £196m. The brightest spot was Premier Inn hotels, which increased sales 12% to £497m, including a sparkling 18% in London in spite of un-even trading during the Olympics. Like-for-like sales growth was 3.3%, helped by a 1.3% increase in occupancy to 80.3% but the main driver was the 1,368 increase in net UK rooms throug ...

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With small companies there is an above average degree of risk compared to buying blue chips. Please be aware that we have not assessed the suitability of any of these investments for you. The newsletter simply states a personal view and diarises the editor’s investment decisions. Please speak to your stockbroker or other qualified individual to ascertain whether any of these companies mentioned would form useful additions to your own portfolios. Past performance is no indication of future success.

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