UK pub group JD Wetherspoon gung-ho on Ireland plans despite likely losses

Wetherspoon's aims to keep growing here despite Covid-19 restrictions.

British pub group JD Wetherspoon has warned it is likely to make a loss for its latest financial year and see subdued sales in the foreseeable future due to ongoing Covid restrictions.

However, the group – which has seven pubs in Ireland and either a live presence or development plans in Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Galway and Carlow – is continuing to roll-out its ambitious Irish expansion plans.

It retains a target of having around 30 pubs operating in Ireland in the coming years and recently said it doesn’t see Covid changing consumers’ long-term pub-going habits and remains keen to open “many more pubs” here.

Wetherspoon has reopened two of its Irish-based pubs – The Great Wood in Blanchardstown and The Forty Foot in Dun Laoghaire – with the others due to open next Monday in accordance with current guidelines and restrictions.

Construction work is continuing on the group’s €21m Keavan’s Port pub/89-bedroom hotel project on Dublin’s Camden Street which is expected to open in October.

On a group-wide basis, Wetherspoon said it saw a 17% drop in like-for-like sales for the 44 days up to August 16. A total of 844 of its 873 pubs in the UK have reopened.

It said it expects subdued sales once the UK government’s subsidised meal scheme, aimed at getting consumers eating out, ends.

The company has called on the UK government to maintain its recent Vat policy regarding pubs. Last month, Britain closed the Vat gap between the on and off trades, temporarily lowering Vat on food sales in pubs to 5% from 20%.

“If this major step towards tax equality is maintained in the long-term, it will result in a significant increase in investment and employment in the on-trade,” the company said.

Wetherspoon is scheduled to publish financial results for the 12 months to the end of July in October. However, chairman Tim Martin said the company expects the figures to show a loss for the year, both before and after exceptional items.

“Some of these exceptional items will be related to the Covid pandemic,” he said.

Mr Martin also said that across the Wetherspoon group, which employs 43,000 people, five positive Covid cases were identified before lockdown measures were introduced and 24 positive tests came to light since the reopening of UK pubs in early July.

He questioned some academic views that pubs are major centres of infection, saying no evidence exists to prove this.

“Risk cannot be eliminated completely in pubs, but sensible social distancing and hygiene policies, combined with continued assistance and co-operation from the authorities, should minimise it,” he said.

Goodbody analyst Paul Ruddy said Wetherspoon’s sales decline still betters the UK pub trade, as a whole, and that the group is “coming out of the crisis in good shape”.