Pub group J D Wetherspoon posted a record loss on Friday as the impact of the pandemic sent revenue spiralling and operating profits down 274%.
Revenue declined from £1,262m in 2020 to £772.6m in 2021.
“How much sympathy Wetherspoons will get for its complaints about the backdrop for the pubs industry is open to question as it serves up a set of results which look so unappetising most investors would probably want to send them back to the kitchen,’ said Russ Mould of AJ Bell.
Coronavirus meant Wetherspoons had to close their pubs for a large proportion of 2021FY and offer a limited service for most of the remainder of the year.
Tim Martin, the Chairman of J D Wetherspoon plc, said:
“Like-for-like sales in the first nine weeks of the current financial year were 8.7% lower than the same weeks in August and September 2019, before the pandemic started. In the last four weeks of the period, like-for-like sales were minus 6.4%.
“Excluding airport pubs, where like-for-like sales declined by 47.3%, like-for-like sales declined by 7.1% in the first nine weeks, and by 4.9% in the last four.
“Total employee numbers averaged 39,025 in the financial year, which increased to 42,003 for the week ending 20 September 2021.
“On average, Wetherspoon has received a reasonable number of applications for vacancies, as indicated by the increase in employee numbers, but some areas of the country, especially “staycation” areas in the West Country and elsewhere, have found it hard to attract staff.”
Martin went on to outline the severe impact the pandemic had on the business:
“During the pandemic, the pressure on pub managers and staff has been particularly acute, with a number of nationwide and regional pub closures and reopenings, often with very little warning, each of which resulted in different regulations.
“In the last year, the country moved, in succession, from lockdown, to ‘Eat Out to Help Out’, to curfews, to firebreaks, to pints with a substantial meal only, to different tier systems and to further lockdowns.
“Pub management teams, and indeed the entire hospitality industry, had an almost impossible burden in trying to communicate often conflicting and arbitrary rules to customers.
“One of the most surprising statistics has been the apparent low level of transmission of the virus in pubs.”