Pubs group JD Wetherspoon (JDW) had a tough time both during the pandemic and as the UK emerged from Covid. A longstanding strategy of focusing on volumes rather than margins, in a bid to offer customers good value, left its profit heavily exposed to the rising cost of staff, energy, alcohol and food. At the same time, the exposure of its estate to increasingly sparse town and city centres hit sales.

However, Wetherspoons has recently regained some momentum in both share price and operational terms, gaining more than 50% on the market since the start of 2023. First-half results (23 March) showed sales up 3% on pre-pandemic levels as the company swung from a loss to a pre-tax profit of £4.6 million, still a long way short of the £50.3 million posted in 2019.

Encouragingly, the trading momentum has continued into the second half of its financial year (running to the end of July) with like-for-like sales up 9% on 2019 levels in the first seven weeks and up 15% on the corresponding period in 2022.

Longer term Wetherspoons will hope to gain market share as less-durable rivals fall by the wayside.

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