Punch Taverns plc 2011 Annual Report

Punch Taverns plc
Annual Report and Financial Statements 2011
03
Chief Executive Officer’s statement
Good progress has been made
during the year, with underlying
results in line with expectations,
despite the significant changes
within the business.
I am encouraged to report a year of good progress for the
business, which has delivered underlying results in line with
our expectations.
These results have been achieved despite the challenging UK
economic, regulatory and fiscal conditions, which continue to
impact on the licensed trade sector.
It has been a year of significant change for the business driven
by the Group’s strategic review and the subsequent demerger
of the Spirit business, on 1 August 2011. The demerger was
completed on schedule and with minimum disruption to the
business, allowing us to maintain focus on our goals as a solely
leased and tenanted business.
Our aim now is to become the UK’s highest quality, most trusted
and best value leased pub company. We are focused on creating
value for our shareholders through successful long-term
partnerships with our licensees in our core estate of 3,000
of the highest quality, best invested leased pubs in the country.
Business review
The Pathway to Partnership programme is now complete and
I am confident we can build on this strong platform to restore
long-term sustainable growth to our core estate.
The focus for the coming year for our core estate will be our
Reaching for Growth initiative, which will support the growth
of the business in four key areas:
i) investment to improve the customer environment
and increase food sales;
ii) attracting high-quality Partners;
iii) driving sales growth; and
iv) effective Punch support to improve the performance
of all of our pubs.
The statutory results include a number of non-cash accounting
charges that relate to previously announced asset writedowns
and as a consequence of the Spirit demerger. Full details of these
accounting charges are provided within the financial review.
Following the demerger, Punch remains a highly leveraged
business, albeit with significant cash resources (£113m as at
7 October 2011) held outside of our securitisation structures.
During the year net support into the securitisation structures
amounted to £8m. There are a number of constraints as a result
of our debt structure and we are actively looking at all options to
optimise Punch’s capital structure to help facilitate delivery of value.
Financial statements Governance
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