Wetherspoon Irish expansion ‘on hold’ due to property prices

JD Wetherspoon's five Irish bars continue to perform well but rising property prices and planning permission delays means the company's expansion plans are effectively on hold at present, founder and chairman Tim Martin has said.

Commenting after the group announced a 5.5 per cent rise in total sales for the 50 weeks to July 10th, with like-for-like sales increasing by 3.4 per cent, Mr Martin said he was pleased with the performance of the company’s Irish bars.

JD Wetherspoon currently operates five bars in Ireland: The Three Tun Tavern in Blackrock; The Forty Foot in Dun Laoghaire; The Great Wood in Blanchardstown; The Old Borough in Swords; and the Linen Weaver in Cork city. The group originally intended to open up to 30 bars in Ireland. However, Mr Martin, who established the pub chain in 1979, said that it had been forced to revise its plans over the last year.

"Since we first came to Ireland the property market has tightened up a lot and so any dream of having a dozen freehold pubs in central Dublin at a knock-down price are over," Mr Martin told The Irish Times.

The company has acquired properties on Camden Street in Dublin and on Arundel Square in Waterford city but plans to open bars at these locations have been delayed due to opposition to planning permission. JD Wetherspoon has also secured permission for a bar in Carlow and has plans for a second pub in Cork and another in the centre of Dublin.

Expansion plans

While Mr Martin said the group remains committed to expanding further in Ireland he admitted it did not expect to be opening new bars anytime soon.

“We have two sites in central Dublin and bid for a third one this week but got knocked back on that and there’s a few others that we have lost out on so things are slow in terms of acquiring property and I think it is going to be a while before we have any new bars opening in Ireland,” he said.

“Sales have been good in Ireland with our bars there performing similarly to many of those pubs that have opened in the UK recently with a much higher food percentage than is the average for the company,” Mr Martin added.

The company said on Wednesday in a pre-close trading statement for the financial year to July 24th, that like-for-like sales for the 11 weeks to July 10th rose by 4 per cent with total sales climbing by 3.8 per cent.

“Profits have been under pressure in recent months so they are a bit down on last year but sales have been reasonable. I’d rate our performance as between 6.5 and 7 out of 10,” he said.

“We’ve been going now for 37 years and if you can get sales going between 1 and 2 per cent above inflation then that’s okay,” he added.

JD Wetherspoon, which operates over 900 bars across Britain and Ireland, said it has opened 13 new pubs since the start of the financial year, had sold 29 and has closed 11. The company said it expects about £13 million of exceptional, non-cash losses in this financial year, which are mainly associated with pub disposals and closures.

Mr Martin, who publicly backed a Brexit vote, reportedly saw £18 million wiped off the value of his shares in the days following the result. However, he told The Irish Times he still believed Britain was right to leave the European Union.

“I definitely think it was the right result. The EU is becoming increasingly undemocratic and is creating huge economic problems,” he said.

Mr Martin said Wetherspoon remains in a sound financial position with net debt at the end of this financial year expected to be about £670 million.

The company said it had bought back 5.7 million shares at a total cost of £39 million, since the start of the financial year.

Full-year preliminary results are due to be announced on September 9th.