Whitbread H2 2026 Earnings Report

Whitbread EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 123.30
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Whitbread Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $2.92 billion
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Whitbread Announcement Details

• Quarter: H2 2026
• Date: 4/30/2026
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, April 30, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 5:00AM ET

Whitbread (LON:WTB) is the owner of Premier Inn, the UK’s biggest hotel brand, with 86,000 rooms in over 850 hotels and a growing presence in Germany with 10,500 rooms in 59 hotels, offering quality accommodation at affordable prices in great locations. People are at the heart of our business. We employ over 38,000 team members in over 900 Premier Inn hotels across the UK and Germany.

Whitbread H2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Whitbread unveiled a new five‑year plan to become a 100% pure‑play hotel business, targeting a +500 bps increase in group ROCE and to generate £2bn of free cash flow available for shareholders by FY2031.
• Negative Sentiment: The plan extends the Accelerating Growth Plan to convert all remaining 197 branded restaurants into integrated F&B and add ~3,000 extension rooms, but this transition will cause a near‑term FY2027 profit hit of about £40m (net £10m reduction) and requires roughly £660m of incremental investment.
• Positive Sentiment: Whitbread reached profitability in Germany in FY2026 and expects the German business to turn cash‑flow positive by FY2029 and deliver double‑digit returns across the network by FY2031 while growing the estate to ~18,000 rooms.
• Positive Sentiment: Management is expanding efficiencies to a cumulative £250m, plans to recycle £1.5bn of freehold property, cut gross CapEx by £1bn, and target net annual CapEx of £200–250m, while maintaining investment‑grade leverage (lease‑adjusted 3.3x) to fund growth and shareholder returns.

Presentation

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Good morning, everyone. I'm Dominic Paul, Group Chief Executive. This is an important day for Whitbread, and we appreciate you joining us today in person, but also for those of you who've joined us online. I'd also like to welcome a number of my fellow ExCo colleagues, and board members who are here today, and our Chair, Christine Hodgson. Alongside our full year results, we've made an important announcement today setting out our new five-year plan. We've been looking hard at our business with a completely open mind and have considered all options to accelerate our strategy and deliver increased margins and returns. Our new five-year plan is bold, ambitious, and deliverable, and we're excited to introduce it to you today. This is the agenda for today.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

I'm going to start with a brief summary of our performance in financial year 2026, and then provide an overview of the steps we're going to take before Hemant takes you through the full year results in more detail. I will set out the drivers for our business review, our conclusions, and the actions we will take as part of our new five-year plan that will maximize total shareholder returns over both the medium and the longer term. You will hear from a number of my ExCo colleagues who will take you through each element of our new plan, providing more detail on the key drivers for each one. We will have a short 15-minute break before Hemant covers capital allocation, financials, and guidance before I wrap things up, and then we can go into Q&A. I'll start with a few moments on last year's results.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

There's a lot to be proud of in these results. We delivered a positive performance that was achieved despite significant external headwinds in the shape of substantial cost increases in the U.K. We've been able to deliver this performance thanks to the power of our vertically integrated model, the strength of our brand, and the impact of our commercial initiatives, highlighting the quality and the resilience of our business. After a challenging first quarter, U.K. market RevPAR returned to growth during the summer. We continue to outperform the wider market. Our Accelerating Growth Plan is on track as we replace lower returning branded restaurants with a more efficient integrated offering and higher returning extension rooms. As you'll hear shortly, we are proposing to build on this further. In response to higher than expected inflationary pressures, our teams have worked hard to deliver accelerated efficiencies during the year.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

In Germany, we reached a really important milestone, achieving profitability for the first time, reflecting the strong momentum and continued progress we are making. Last, but certainly not least, we returned over GBP 400 million to shareholders through a combination of dividends and share buybacks. Today, we are announcing our new five-year plan. This is an important moment in Whitbread's 280-year history and marks some significant changes that we are making to the business. Changes that will make us even better and more profitable business, delivering stronger returns for our shareholders over the medium and longer term. It's a bold plan, and we are highly confident in our ability to execute it. This plan delivers strong, profitable growth, and we will continue to take advantage of constrained supply to further strengthen our position in both of our core markets.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

By increasing our focus on the highest returning projects, like extending our Accelerating Growth Plan in the U.K., driving more efficiencies, and by focusing on our most successful formats in Germany, we will also grow our margins and our returns. We're going to be more aggressive in working our assets harder and reducing our capital intensity by over GBP 1 billion. By recycling more of our freehold property, we can increase our group return on capital by 500 basis points, a result that will generate GBP 2 billion worth of free cash flow for shareholders by FY 2031. We've already made excellent progress in the transformation of Whitbread, despite some significant external headwinds outside of our control, and I'm really excited by what's coming next.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Our new five-year plan is a step change for Whitbread and completes our journey to becoming a 100% pure-play hotel business. We will go further and faster to deliver a great experience for our guests and high quality growth, margins, and returns for our shareholders. I'll come back later to go through the outcome of our business review and our future plans. First, I'm gonna hand over to Hemant, who will take you through the full year results in a bit more detail. Over to you, Hemant.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Thanks, Dominic. Right. Good morning, everyone. I'm Hemant Patel. I'm Chief Financial Officer of Whitbread. I've been so for just over four years. I'll start with a summary of the group's financial performance before covering the U.K. and Germany in a bit more detail. A robust recovery in U.K. accommodation sales in the second half and positive momentum in Germany, offset by expected lower food and beverage revenues as a result of the Accelerating Growth Plan, resulted in flat group revenues year-on-year. Better than expected cost efficiencies and reductions in our cost base due to the AGP helped mitigate significant cost pressures, including above-inflation increases in National Living Wage, National Insurance, and food and beverage. As a result, operating costs fell by 2%, supporting a 4% increase in EBITDA to GBP 1.1 billion.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Having returned GBP 419 million to shareholders in the year, high interest costs meant the adjusted PBT was flat year-over-year at GBP 483 million. Adjusting items increased to GBP 185 million, majority of which are non-cash and related to our Accelerating Growth Plan. Meaning statutory PBT was GBP 298 million. Our vertically integrated model continues to generate significant operating cash flow. We were able to add to this with GBP 313 million of property-related disposals, helping to fund our investment in higher returning growth opportunities, such as our Accelerating Growth Plan. We have a strong balance sheet, with lease adjusted leverage of 3.3x, which remains within our investment grade threshold of 3.5x. I'll now run through the drivers behind this performance, starting with the U.K.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Whilst accommodation sales increased by 1%, reflecting a strong recovery from the second quarter and continued outperformance versus the market, lower food and beverage as a result of the Accelerating Growth Plan meant that total U.K. statutory revenue was down 1% year-over-year. We delivered significant efficiencies which helped drive a 2% increase in EBITDA, just over GBP 1 billion, and U.K. adjusted profit before tax was GBP 499 million. Our occupancy levels remained high, stepping up in the second quarter as we saw a return to market growth, supported by strong demand over the summer months, reaching 79% for the year. Average room rate increased by 3% to GBP 82, driven by the strength of our commercial initiatives and trading strategies. Both RevPAR and revenue were up 1%, with accommodation sales at GBP 2 billion.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Thanks to our brand strength, trading expertise, and the benefit of several commercial initiatives, we outperformed the market on both the RevPAR and accommodation sales growth, and are continuing to command a healthy RevPAR premium of nearly GBP 6. This positive performance has continued into the current trading period, and we continue to outperform the market with an increased RevPAR premium to the mid-scale economy market of nearly GBP 7. Now on to Germany. Reaching profitability in Germany for the first time represents an important milestone for the group, with segment adjusted profit before tax of GBP 2 million. Our performance reflects the momentum and continued progress we are making in this large and exciting market. Revenues were up 13%, driven by the increasing maturity of our estate. Further improvements to our trading strategies broaden our distribution and increasing food and beverage sales.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Operating costs of the year increased to £177 million, reflecting our network expansion and cost inflation. With strong revenue growth, EBITDA increased by 28% to £85 million. Our cohort of more established hotels is continuing to mature and is a key driver of our overall performance. Local site profits increased to £20 million in the year, up from £16 million a year ago. As Erik will come onto later, we are now clear on what works really well and what doesn't in Germany, and expect our most established cohort to reach double-digit returns this year, and by full year 2031, the entire network will be delivering double-digit returns. We continue to outperform the rest of the German mid-scale economy market. As you can see, both our more established cohort and our network as a whole are outperforming the market in terms of RevPAR growth.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Our cohort of more established hotels grew RevPAR by 6% in local currency, ahead of our total estate, reinforcing the point that it is not yet mature and giving us real confidence that it can and will grow further. Finally, turning now to group cash flow. Our vertically integrated model and strong market position meant that we delivered adjusted operating cash flow of over GBP 700 million, helping to fund both our ongoing program of investment in future growth and shareholder returns. During the year, we continued to invest in high returning growth opportunities, with the result that gross CapEx spend was higher than last year at GBP 697 million. To fund this and other high returning growth opportunities, we recycled GBP 313 million of proceeds from property-related disposals, resulting in net CapEx of GBP 384 million, below our previous guidance.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

As a result, total cash flow before shareholder returns was just over £200 million. Having returned £419 million to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks, we maintain a strong balance sheet with net debt of £709 million and lease adjusted leverage of 3.3x. I'll now hand back to Dominic, who will provide an overview of the outcome of our business review and new five-year plan.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Thank you, Hemant. These chairs are quite awkward to get out of. Just warning everybody. Our new five-year plan is a result of our detailed business review, excuse me, that was led by the board with extensive advice from external advisors, including three of the world's leading investment banks. As I'll come on to, we are making some significant changes to our business and our approach, changes that will deliver a step change in our margins and accelerate returns for our shareholders. With clearly defined levers, our plan will generate GBP 275 million of incremental profit contribution by February 2031 from initiatives that are all within our control, more than offsetting the unexpected impact of Business Rates and higher employment costs. We will extend our Accelerating Growth Plan that will see us exit all branded restaurants and drive an increase in U.K. margins and returns.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We'll increase our cost efficiency program to GBP 250 million. We're going to reduce our capital intensity by cutting gross CapEx from GBP 3.5 billion to GBP 2.5 billion. By recycling more of our freehold property, we will reduce net CapEx by more than GBP 1 billion. This will reduce our freehold percentage from around 50% today to operate within a range of between 30%-40%, supporting our strategic objective of maintaining a strong investment-grade balance sheet. We will accelerate our performance in Germany that will turn cash flow positive in full year 2029 and reach double-digit returns by full year 2031. Together, these steps will increase group ROCE by 500 basis points. The result will generate GBP 2 billion of free cash flow available for shareholder returns. Retaining the status quo was never the starting point.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Instead, we reviewed all strategic options and in great detail to ensure we maximize value for shareholders. Our conclusion is that versus all of the other options, the plan we are announcing today generates the most value over the medium and longer term. I will now take you through the steps we are taking, providing you with some of the context for our decision-making. First, to update you on our execution of the previous five-year plan announced back in October 2024. We have been making excellent progress on each of the core elements of our previous plan, as highlighted on this slide. Our Accelerating Growth Plan and efficiency savings really stand out given their scale and impact. We have also continued to optimize our U.K. portfolio, reach profitability in Germany, and realized over GBP 300 million of property-related disposals on attractive terms.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Each of these achievements have only been possible because of our vertically integrated approach and our strong property-backed balance sheet. I'd also highlight our commitment to shareholders as we have returned over GBP 400 million via dividends and share buybacks, despite what has been a challenging business environment over the past 18 months. This slide highlights two of the external challenges faced since announcing our previous five-year plan. I mean, it's fair to say that the last two U.K. budgets have not been kind to the hospitality sector. First, in October 2024, the government introduced above-inflation increases in labor costs together with a material increase in Employer National Insurance contributions. With over 30,000 team members in the U.K., these were significant for our business.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

This was followed by a major increase in business rates in the November 2025 budget, taken together, these factors have hit the whole hospitality industry hard. For us, before mitigation, they are expected to reduce future profits by around GBP 160 million. Now, the scale of these changes were not expected by the sector, we are working hard to ensure that the consequences of their impact is clearly understood at the highest levels of government. Our culture and our mindset mean we always challenge ourselves to adapt and improve when faced with such challenges. At the same time, there is no getting away from the fact that the market has continued to apply a meaningful discount to our inherent value.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

As a result, prompted by the impact of Business Rates, as part of our review, it's right that we looked hard at all of the options available to maximize value creation over the medium and the long term. That's what we've been doing since the end of November last year. This really has been a rigorous process. As a board, we've approached all options with an open mind. Our review asked a number of key questions. What steps should we take to drive profitable growth? How can we offset these unexpected headwinds to increase U.K. margins and returns? We believe Germany can be a significant driver of value for the group. How can we accelerate our Germany performance? What else can we do to increase total shareholder returns? How do we ensure that we maintain high resilience through the cycle?

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

To answer these questions, we reviewed in detail how we can improve margins and become even more efficient. We reviewed all of our future capital spend and how that was being allocated in light of unexpected external headwinds. We reviewed our capital structure and whether it was optimized to maximize value. We reviewed what options there might be to drive more value from our German business. Given the significant changes to the external fiscal and operating environment, might other business models deliver more value over the medium and longer term? Our review has been forensic. We've considered the short-term and the long-term implications, as well as the feasibility of making any fundamental change to our business. At every stage, we remained clear about the primary objective, which is to maximize total shareholder returns over both the medium and the long term.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Now, there are a number of different business models being deployed by hotel businesses around the world, and many have been hugely successful. While each model have their differences, essentially, they are made up of different combinations of the three core elements of the hotel value chain: operations, brand and distribution, and property. We have spent many months examining each of the combinations in great detail and assessed each one against a number of criteria. Most importantly, what is the potential for value creation over the medium and longer term? Will the models enable us to deliver attractive levels of growth? Does it allow us to control operations at site and the customer experience? What are the capital requirements? What are the implications for leverage and therefore financial risks through the cycle and in uncertain times?

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

How long would a transition to such a model take, and how much disruption would it cause to the business? Having studied all of the various models through this lens, the available alternative to Whitbread essentially fell into two broad options. Either separating the brand or separating the property from our operations. Separating the brand can either mean becoming a franchisor or a franchisee. Our focused geographic and segment exposure, as well as our relatively small scale in global terms, limits our ability to deliver attractive returns as a franchisor, meaning it would take many years of further expansion to reach the required scale to do that. Thus, becoming a franchisee where we sell the brand and continue with an operational and property ownership structure broadly similar to today would be the only practical option here.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Similarly, we looked at options to separate the property from the operations on both a rental basis and full trading basis, and the only practical option available is selling all the real estate to becoming a 100% all leased operating company. This page looks at the two extremes of selling the brand or selling the real estate in a little more detail. Firstly, as a franchisee, Whitbread would become a pure operator with a mix of freehold and leasehold property as we do now. We would have to pay for things like marketing and other fees for services provided by the new brand owner. In other words, we would look very similar to how we look now, but minus the brand.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Selling the brand would reduce control over the Premier Inn product, which scores highly with our guests and contributes to high RevPARs, and could also involve restrictions and controls in the future which could impact our future operating business. In order to extract more value from a sale than continuing to own the brand, you need to believe that the purchaser is able to market and distribute rooms better than Premier Inn does today, i.e., generate higher RevPAR and higher sales. We already operate at very high levels of occupancy with a market-leading position and consistent outperformance relative to the rest of the mid-scale and economy market. Without the brand, we believe it would be much more difficult to grow. Finally, whilst the Premier Inn brand is a valuable asset, it is likely to only represent a relatively small part of the group's overall value.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

As a result, whilst realizing value in the short term by impacting the longer term prospects of the operating company that remains, there is a high risk that this would outweigh any short-term benefit from having sold the brand in the first place. The second option would be to separate the operations and real estate into an OpCo/PropCo structure, and selling the real estate to become a 100% leasehold business. These structures have worked for a number of groups around the world, so why not Whitbread? Well, first, our flexible approach to property is critical for our ability to grow in the U.K. Today, we have full flexibility to secure the best sites in the best locations, a combination that has given us a competitive edge and secured our market-leading position in the U.K. market.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

It would reduce operational control at site, impacting our ability to develop sites such as through the AGP program or to extract development profits. Being an all-leased business would result in much higher operating leverage in a cyclical industry. It would also result in higher lease-adjusted leverage, which would not be consistent with maintaining an investment-grade credit rating without holding cash on the balance sheet. As we've said before, our strong balance sheet is a source of competitive advantage, both commercially and financially. In summary, while selling the brand and/or the real estate could realize some value in the short term, both routes would damage the medium and long-term growth potential and value creation offered by a vertically integrated model, are not going to maximize total shareholder returns at Whitbread.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We do recognize, however, that different models can work at different stages of maturity, and as we always do, we will keep an open mind and continue to reassess the alternatives. However, our review has concluded that for our business right now, an integrated model is the best for medium and long-term value creation, and with some changes we can deliver even better returns. Now, as I've just concluded, the integrated model drives significant competitive advantage, and it's the right one for us today, and I'll now expand a bit more on that on this slide. Being integrated allows us to be a best-in-class operator, delivering a high quality and consistent product at scale. We have significant control over the quality and the consistency of our product, and we keep a tight control of our costs.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Both are critical for long-term success as a budget hotel operator and have been the driving force behind our journey to become the U.K.'s leading hotel business. An integrated model means we can build and develop a strong commercial program, delivering high pricing discipline and best-in-class revenue management. This is evidenced by our continued outperformance and the scale of our RevPAR premium versus the rest of the market. The strength of our brand means we have the highest brand awareness and our sales are largely direct in the U.K., resulting in low distribution costs and extensive customer reach. Premier Inn has an unrivaled 12% market share in the U.K., which is the largest of any hotel brand in any market in the world. We couldn't achieve that without the business model we have.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

In a market where supply remains constrained, we see significant potential to increase this further using our flexible approach to property and by optimizing our estate. Opportunities that just aren't possible with other models. Finally, and really importantly, our balance sheet strength is a source of significant competitive advantage, providing us with resilience through the cycle and real commercial edge as a strong financial covenant means we are a more attractive financial partner than our competitors. Our scale, brand, footprint, and operating model are difficult to replicate, creating a clear moat around our business, one that we are determined to exploit further. However, despite all of these positives, we do recognize that our capital intensity is a drag on free cash flow and returns.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Whilst maintaining an integrated model, can we optimize our approach by taking some of the best parts of the alternative models to reduce our capital intensity, increase cash flow, and drive higher returns? The answer is yes. As part of our new five-year plan, we are taking the following actions. We see significant potential to extend our position in the U.K. and take advantage of the favorable supply environment. We can do this whilst using less capital. By focusing growth into our highest returning projects, we will deliver significant incremental profit over the life of the plan. Following the success of the Accelerating Growth Plan over the last 24 months, we are extending the plan to cover all remaining 197 branded restaurants, a process that will see Whitbread becoming a pure-play hotel business and deliver significant increase in margins for our business.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

This proposal is, of course, subject to consultation with our teams. Whilst moderating our pace of U.K. expansion over the next five years, we are focusing on our highest returning projects with key growth opportunities, including London and our Hub by Premier Inn brand, which has huge potential. We will talk more about later. We will also open high-returning extension rooms through the Accelerating Growth Plan. At the same time, with our significant property expertise, we are continuing to optimize our estate, which will see us exit lower returning sites and more marginal pipeline projects. The net result of these changes will see us reach 96,000 rooms open by February 2031. By reducing capital intensity and delivering on AGP and our cost efficiency program, we will increase U.K. margins and increase returns substantially by February 2031.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Second, our vertically integrated model and scale mean that driving like-for-like sales and managing our cost base are important drivers of our performance. A key enabler is the increasing use of technology and AI within our business. Drawing on our unrivaled bank of customer data, we will further optimize our pricing and maximize revenues across every single site night. We're, of course, not immune from the impact of wider market dynamics, and Joe Garrood, our Chief Commercial Officer, is going to take you through the initiatives that will drive our business forward and keep us ahead of our competitors. We have a great track record of delivering material cost savings, and having assessed all of our initiatives, we are today increasing and extending our largest ever efficiency program to deliver GBP 250 million of efficiencies by February 2031.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Third, we have made great progress in Germany and have grown substantially since first entering the market in 2016 to become a business of real scale. Our product is very popular with guests. We are increasing our brand awareness and market share, and some of our more established sites, whilst not yet fully mature, are already highly profitable and delivering double-digit returns. Over the past few years, we have fundamentally changed our approach in Germany, but we do acknowledge that it has taken a long time to reach profitability, and we are still not at our target levels of return. As Erik will explain shortly, we now have a model that works, and we are clear on how we can accelerate our financial performance and take full advantage of what is a significant opportunity for the group, one that we are very well-placed to exploit.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Whilst we considered a broad range of alternative options for Germany, none of them were attractive given the scale of potential we see for our business there. By focusing on proven growth formats and locations, optimizing our estate and reducing capital spend, looking to fund future expansion through new leaseholds or the recycling of existing freeholds, we will maximize medium and long-term returns in Germany. With significant potential, and despite a reduced pipeline versus our previous plan, we still expect to grow our open estate by more than 50% over the next five years to 18,000 rooms. The changes we are making in Germany will see us accelerate free cash flow to become cash flow positive in full year 2029 and deliver double-digit returns by financial year 2031.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Finally, we will continue to benefit from the significant advantages from owning freehold real estate and maintaining our investment-grade credit rating. We can still do so by owning less freehold property and by deploying less capital. Our refocused plans in both the U.K. and Germany will drive higher margins and returns. We will reduce gross CapEx by GBP 1 billion and recycle GBP 1.5 billion of freehold property, reducing our freehold mix to between 30%-40% and reducing our capital intensity so that over the life of the plan, our net annual CapEx reduces to between GBP 200 million and GBP 250 million per annum, an overall reduction of more than GBP 1 billion versus our previous plan. This will drive a marked increase in return on capital whilst also maintaining investment grade.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Each of the actions I've just spoken about are embedded within our new five-year plan as set out on this slide. This is a bold and achievable plan centered on those things that we can control. Each element of the plan has near and medium term milestones attached to them. This is an evolution rather than a revolution. For very good reason, this is a business which consistently outperforms its market, has an unrivaled brand and market position, and a strong platform for growth. By accelerating our strategy and capitalizing on our existing strengths, we will maximize value for shareholders. I've talked through the actions we are taking. We are setting clear deliverables for the end of the plan. By February 2031, we will complete our transition to becoming a pure-play hotel business.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

By pulling three growth levers, we will deliver a total incremental PBT contribution of GBP 275 million, more than offsetting the impact of Business Rates and higher employment costs. We will also deliver GBP 250 million of efficiencies building on our strong track record of cost savings, reduce gross capital spend by GBP 1 billion and net CapEx by more than GBP 1 billion as we recycle more of our freehold property. We will drive a 500 basis point increase in group return on capital. We're gonna reduce our freehold mix to operate within a range of 30%-40% from around 50% now and generate GBP 2 billion of free cash flow available for shareholders. This plan will drive the best return to our shareholders, and it's one that we are really looking forward to executing.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

You're now gonna hear from my fellow ExCo members, Mark, Simon, Joe, Hemant, and Erik, who will each talk you through the element of the plan that they are leading in more detail. First up is Mark Anderson to take you through U.K. network expansion. Over to you, Mark. Well managed.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

Thanks, Dominic. Thank you. Morning, everyone. My name's Mark Anderson. I'm the Managing Director of Property and International. I look after all of the commercial real estate at Whitbread. I've spent over 30 years in property, the last 20 of which have been with Whitbread. I also look after our procurement and supply chain division, and I lead our Premier Inn business in the Middle East. I'm going to spend a few minutes explaining the market opportunity to grow Premier Inn and Hub in the U.K. and Ireland, how we optimize that opportunity by catchment area, where we see the greatest opportunities for high returning growth, and how we actively then manage our portfolio, including exiting lower returning assets that no longer meet our hurdle rates.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

I'll start with a brief update on the structure of the U.K. hotel market and how we're taking advantage of the favorable supply backdrop. As you can see from the left side of this slide, supply growth over the past decade has been very low, with total room supply broadly unchanged. Supply dynamics within the market are more complex, with independent hotels remaining in structural decline while branded hotels have continued to take share. Premier Inn has remained the fastest-growing hotel brand in the U.K., adding nearly 22,000 bedrooms across the past decade. We believe that the macroeconomic headwinds will only compound the effects on the independent sector and will continue to result in a benign outlook for supply growth.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

High interest rates, a lack of developer funding, combined with cost inflation, have also resulted in a much lower level of U.K. hotel construction for new hotels than historically in similar cycles. Our updated analysis suggests that total hotel room supply in the U.K. will not get back to pre-pandemic levels until 2028 at the earliest now. Furthermore, our analysis doesn't yet fully reflect the impact of the Business Rates change and so could prove to be conservative, with more smaller independent hotels unable to adapt and ultimately closing and exiting from the market. Against this backdrop, we see significant opportunity for profitable growth in the U.K.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

Given the headwinds that Dominic's talked about, we've raised our bar on all future development projects. We've increased our focus on the highest returning opportunities and therefore refined our future portfolio and pipeline with the result that we've reduced our group net CapEx by over GBP 1 billion. Active management of our portfolio is also essential to maximize returns and improve our estate as we look to exit lower returning sites and recycle the capital into higher returning projects like our Accelerated Growth Program. Because we're vertically integrated and capture most of the value chain, we invest time and rigor to determine the exact room opportunity in each catchment area for both Premier Inn and Hub.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

We break the U.K. market down into over 1,700 catchments to assess their local supply and demand dynamics that we then use to identify the best locations as well as the optimal size and property for each new property. This identifies the total room opportunity in each catchment for us without diluting our current performance, and ultimately gives us a guide on the future room potential for the U.K. As part of this process, we also decide which sites to extend, which sites we need to exit to improve the performance and the efficiency of the catchment overall. Our rigorous post-investment review process ensures that those that do meet our requirements go on to deliver as planned.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

We're only able to drive incremental value like this because of our high freehold ownership and because our strong balance sheet ensures that we're the number one preferred tenant for hotel landlords in the U.K. On this slide, you can see three examples of how we maximize returns from a particular catchment by actively managing our estate. In this case, Manchester, where we have several hotels. Our Deansgate property at the top was performing really well, but we'd identified a better high returning site elsewhere in the city. We worked with a local third-party developer to convert the property into student accommodation and offices, which resulted in us extracting over GBP 40 million of proceeds from the sale of the site.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

Over the past three years, we've generated over GBP 120 million from similar deals, and we see an opportunity to generate over GBP 150 million from similar deals over the next three to four years. The second example here is our Center West property, where this leased hotel needed remedial works, which were preventing the owner from selling the building to an institutional investor. We bought the hotel off them at a really good price, completed the work ourselves, then sold and leased the hotel back on new preferred terms for us and taking a healthy property profit in the process.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

At our Northern Quarter site, we're completing a forward funding transaction where we bought the site, obtained planning consent for a new hotel, and as the hotel is nearing completion, we then sell to an investor who funds all of our costs, and we enter into a favorable lease agreement that only starts when the hotel opens, which again reduces our capital employed and drives total returns even higher. Turning now to some of our key opportunities that we think will drive high returning growth as part of our plan. We see huge potential to continue to deliver fantastic returns in London. Despite us having grown strongly in recent years, Premier Inn still has a relatively small proportion of the overall London market.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

As a global city with strong demand from both business and leisure guests, London delivers high RevPARs and returns for both Premier Inn and Hub, which is why over 40% of our current pipeline is planned in the capital. The majority of these are also in central London, where average RevPARs are over 20% higher than London as a whole. The table on the right illustrates the average revenues, costs, and profit per room for one of our Premier Inn hotels in London. Both freehold and leasehold hotels on a capitalized lease basis deliver highly attractive returns on capital. Another exciting opportunity is our Hub brand, which opened initially in 2014 to open up access to new city center sites, and we now have 19 fantastic hotels open across prime locations in London and Edinburgh.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

As Joe Garrood will talk to you about later, there are several differences between Hub and our main Premier Inn brand. Firstly, our standard Hub bedroom is 8 sq m to 9 sq m smaller than a Premier Inn room. This means that we can accommodate 60%-70% more rooms for Hub than for a Premier Inn in the same building envelope, allowing us to generate high profits and returns in catchments that would otherwise be inaccessible for us. Secondly, Hub's strong modern design allows us to target a distinct part of the market who are often different customers to Premier Inn. This means that we can locate our Hub hotels close to Premier Inns with minimal cannibalization of existing revenues. Also, the use of clever design and technology has resulted in a lean operating model that drives higher margins and enables strong overall economics.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

Hub is generating great returns of around 15% and typically outperforms Premier Inn in the same catchment. This is down to higher room density per sq ft, supporting higher profit per room, a lean operating model, and by accessing catchments that would otherwise be inaccessible to us, capturing new incremental demand for the group. We currently have just over 2,000 rooms in our pipeline for Hub, giving us a clear pathway to 5,000 open rooms by financial year 2031. We think we can go much further, including the potential to add Hub hotels in Ireland, other U.K. regional cities, as well as in Germany, where we've now acquired our first site for Hub in Berlin. The third and final part of our portfolio optimization process is the proactive way that we manage our property estate.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

Whilst this is something that we've always done, the headwinds that Dominic's talked about mean we're being even more aggressive to ensure that we continue to deliver attractive long-term returns on capital. Following the material increase in Business Rates, we've already removed several sites from our pipeline where it's now clear that they will not achieve our target hurdle rates. This includes, for example, here on the slide, a former retail store we acquired in Dorchester, where despite securing planning consent for conversion, the site's no longer viable following the increase in Business Rates, and so we're going to sell it. We take a forensic approach when we're assessing our new sites, and we're reviewing the potential exit from several open but subscale lower-returning hotels, a process that'll allow us to recycle capital into higher-returning projects like our Accelerating Growth Plan.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

This ability to optimize our estate is only possible because of our model and our scale and the fact that we own a significant amount of our property. The chart on the left of this slide shows the returns that we're getting from both our mature sites as well as those that have opened more recently. As you can see, our more recent openings, which are not yet mature, are already delivering very similar returns, and this will only continue to increase. The chart on the right gives you the makeup of our committed pipeline. As you can see, it's heavily weighted towards large freehold sites in London, a significant number of which will be Hub hotels, which, as I've said, are already driving really attractive levels of return.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

As a result, the impact of these new openings on our financial performance is going to be highly accretive and will drive higher returns over the life of our five-year plan. Over the next five years, through our committed pipeline plus AGP extension rooms, less proposed exits will reach a total network of around 96,000 rooms in the U.K. and Ireland. Our committed pipeline of 8,000 rooms will deliver an incremental profit contribution of GBP 110 million by February 2031. This implies a higher profit per room than our network today, as I highlighted on the previous slide, the weighting of our pipeline means we expect the profit per room to be well above average. We continue to see significant growth potential beyond February 2031.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

The pace at which we move towards our long-term potential of 125,000 rooms for the U.K. and Ireland, a 45% increase versus our estate today, will be driven entirely by the availability of attractive sites and the levels of return that they can generate. I'll now hand over to Simon, who's going to tell you about our exciting Accelerated Growth Plan. Simon.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

Thanks, Mark. Morning, everyone. My name is Simon Ewins. I run all of Whitbread's hotel and restaurant operations across the U.K. and Ireland. I've worked in Whitbread for just over 20 years, fulfilling a number of field-based and central roles, and I've run the Premier Inn operation for the last 11 years. As Dominic mentioned earlier, the extension of our AGP, Accelerating Growth Program, to include all remaining restaurants will improve the guest experience we deliver, and it will result in us becoming a more profitable, higher-returning, pure-play hotel business. In addition, it will increase the consistency of our food and beverage offering across all of our sites and add highly profitable hotel extensions, which is our most efficient way to deliver room growth.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

First, maybe for those that are less familiar with our history, as a former brewer and large pub business in the U.K., we started Premier Inn almost 40 years ago by building budget hotels next door to our freehold pubs. The Premier Inn provided the bedrooms and the pub restaurant, the F&B. Therefore, F&B has always been a key part of the Premier Inn guest experience, and we know that it's one of the top reasons that our customers choose us over our competitors. More recently, and prior to AGP, a number of our hotels served F&B to guests using a branded restaurant located next door to the hotel, with approximately 75% of those customers being non-hotel guests. However, a significant number of our hotel guests were served using an integrated restaurant located inside our larger city center hotels.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

This integrated format has been specifically designed and optimized over the years to meet the needs of our guests and is well-liked given its more tailored offering. This format also benefits us as it is more efficient and higher returning. Now, since the pandemic, our U.K. hotel performance has obviously gone from strength to strength. However, our branded restaurants have faced material challenge with significant inflation impact, impacting both site level and wider business unit profitability. Alongside this, operating six different brands also adds significant complexity to our operating model. This means that there's a degree of inconsistency of experience for our hotel guests too, who also really like the integrated offer.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

Finally, many of our branded restaurants are in need of investment. When we reflect on the lower financial returns generated from a restaurant refurbishment when compared with the returns generated with the equivalent capital invested in our hotel estate, this really is an unattractive option for us. The previously announced AGP program was our solution to address this. It's our biggest ever development program and replaces a number of lower returning branded restaurants with a more efficient and tailored F&B offering, as well as unlocking the addition of highly profitable hotel rooms. Today, we're announcing the proposed extension of this plan to now include all remaining branded restaurants, further improving the experience for our guests and driving higher financial returns for our shareholders.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

As a reminder, our Accelerating Growth Plan is our highest returning growth opportunity in the U.K., with a rapid payback on investment, it is our number 1 priority in terms of capital allocation. As you heard from Mark, it is because we own the freehold that we can more easily develop our sites and drive higher returns by removing those low returning restaurants and replacing them with more efficient integrated offerings. It is worth noting that the average margin across our 500 integrated sites is around 10 percentage points higher than it is for sites served with a branded restaurant. AGP is also very low risk. It's a capital efficient way of delivering room growth. We can add high returning rooms, critically including more Premier Plus rooms, which our guests hugely like and drive very strong returns.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

We can do this without additional land or lease costs in locations with proven demand, meaning that we're confident in increasing catchment revenues and delivering an uplift in returns. On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see the impact of the change on our Margate hotel. Prior to AGP, this site was already at very high occupancy, but the neighboring branded restaurant was loss-making and acted as a drag on the site-level returns. By converting the loss-making branded restaurant into a 36-bedroom extension, of which 15 rooms are Premier Plus, as well as adding an integrated F&B offering, we're able to deliver an uplift to site-level profitability, driving incremental return on capital of 18%. Having been completed now for 12 months, Margate is driving both commercial benefits and improvements in guest scores.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

The extension rooms are performing strongly, and the chart on the left shows a clear uplift in accommodation sales once complete, with an increase of over 30% in revenues versus pre-AGP. At the same time, reflecting the appeal of the new integrated F&B offer, guest satisfaction has significantly increased, with scores up approximately 20 percentage points versus pre-AGP. This really highlights the benefits to our guest proposition. Whilst this is just one site, we are also starting to see real commercial benefits and improved guest scores across our other completed sites. Now, we've learnt lots over the last 24 months about what works, and we've made a number of improvements that are ensuring we deliver the best commercial performance and the best guest experience. We've moved quickly over the last two years with around 70% of planning applications already approved.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

We have completed or are on-site at 40% of sites with approximately 600 new extension rooms already opened. We've opened 80 new integrated restaurants that are helping to drive improved financial performance, and we're in progress on all remaining sites. We've also made good progress in our planned exit from sites earmarked for sale, having now sold 51 sites, and we've also agreed terms on the majority of remaining sites. Given this positive progress, we are proposing to extend our previous plan to now include all 197 remaining branded restaurants, replacing them with a more efficient integrated solution and adding more high-returning extension rooms. This plan is, of course, subject to consultation with our teams.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

Once complete, we will have exited from all branded restaurants to become a pure-play hotel business. This will simplify our operating model significantly, driving large overhead savings while delivering an improved and more consistent guest experience. One very small example of this is that we'll be able to reduce our current number of menus from around 20 to just three. Much simpler, well-liked by our guests, better for our financial performance. This slide summarizes the expected impacts of our total Accelerating Growth Plan. We will open a total of 3,000 new, highly profitable extension rooms over the next five years, in addition to the 600 rooms we've already opened at the end of FY 2026. Our original AGP is on track and will deliver incremental profit in profit benefit in FY 2027.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

However, there will be a short-term reduction to U.K. profits in FY 2027 of around GBP 40 million as we transition the remaining branded restaurants, resulting in a net reduction to U.K. profits of around GBP 10 million. In financial year 2028, the total program is expected to deliver 30 million GBP-40 million GBP of incremental profit before tax, and this will continue to increase as we open more extension rooms and exit from loss-making restaurants, reaching around 100 million GBP of incremental profit by February 2031. total spend on the extended project, excluding any proceeds from the sale of branded restaurants, will now increase to around 660 million GBP. All of this investment will be funded through the reallocation of our existing CapEx program and the recycling of freehold property.

[Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member at Whitbread]

With a total expected return on capital employed of between 15% and 20%, it is clear why the extension of the AGP program is our number one priority in terms of capital allocation. In summary, by financial year 2031, this plan will see us become a pure-play hotel business. It will see us drive an excellent experience for our guests and drive higher returns for our shareholders. I'm now gonna hand you over to Joe, who will take you through our commercial program.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

Thanks, Simon. Good morning, everyone. I'm Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer. I joined Whitbread 2.205 years ago and have over 20 years' experience in consumer and digital businesses, most recently as Chief Commercial Officer of PureGym, the U.K.'s leading fitness chain. It's great to be here to share our commercial plan, why our proposition model are best in class. As Dominic said, guests rate our U.K. proposition ahead of every major competitor on both quality and value. Quality means a warm welcome, great night's sleep, and brilliant breakfast and dinner delivered across our 850 U.K. hotels in the best locations. We provide great value for money for our guests, evidenced by our high value for money scores and an average price of just over GBP 80 versus the wider hotel market at around GBP 123.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

We serve U.K.-based leisure and business missions with revenue split 50/50. Across both SMEs and large corporates, we have a healthy balance. Our vertical integration drives strong RevPAR through four components. A distinctive brand with market leading awareness of over 90%, driving 95% direct bookings. This gives us pricing and inventory control and structurally lower acquisition costs with selective third-party use unlocking profitable incremental demand. Best in class conversion via full-funnell digital marketing, an optimized online journey and proprietary revenue management system, driving occupancy of around 80% alongside consistent rate growth. Direct guest relationships, creating rich first-party data to target offers and incentives, growing repeat purchase and loyalty. Control of the proposition, so we roll out improvements at pace, protect consistency and scale revenue initiatives like Rooms with a View.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

This model underpins our continued RevPAR premium versus the mid-scale and economy market in the U.K. Many of the aspects are also live in Germany, helping us drive RevPAR growth there. We're the clear market leader but are certainly not complacent and see more opportunity to grow our outperformance by evolving brand, marketing and distribution to unlock incremental demand profitably and at low cost. Converting that demand via digital and revenue management optimization and growing ancillary and upgrade revenues. Investing to maintain and evolve our guest proposition, protecting the consistency that underpins our brand. Accelerating Hub through awareness, proposition development and trading levers. Through Hub, we believe we can widen consumer appeal and unlock new locations in the U.K. and beyond. Now, we've repositioned Premier Inn with a stronger, fresher, more distinctive identity grounded in guest insight. I'm now going to pass over to Lenny Henry to explain.

[Video Narrator]

[Presentation]

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

As you can see, this platform reinforces our proposition and consistency. You know what you're getting with Premier Inn. The brand is leveraged by a full-funnell strategy to create demand and bookings at low cost. Since the March relaunch, we've reached over 30 million people across broad media mix, leaning further into digital and social channels like TikTok to turn reach into demand and bookings. We're using AI to optimize and test channels that drive direct traffic at lower cost. For example, paid brand search, around 20% of direct digital revenue has delivered more lowest cost clicks, materially improving efficiency. On distribution, we're expanding our audience while staying disciplined on acquisition cost and profitability. B2B is central to this. We launched Premier Inn Business, bringing Business Booker and Business Account together to simplify booking, payment, and spend management.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

With deeper travel management company partnerships, we're growing across corporates of all sizes. While most bookings are direct and our base is predominantly domestic, we are broadening demand profitably through carefully selected inbound-only online travel agents. With these new international partners, rooms sold grew by over 100% in H1, rising to over 300% in H2. With increased demand for our sites, this is helping us to drive yields and the scope to further optimize. Our model very effectively converts demands into bookings, revenues, and repeat stays. We're optimizing digital channels where small changes can have a big impact. For example, highlighting popular hotels has had a positive impact on site conversion. With most guests booking direct, our first-party data advantage means we can better target customers with offers, building repeat bookings and growing loyalty.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

Best-in-class revenue management is a key strategic advantage for us and another major benefit of our integrated model. We've built a proprietary automated pricing engine bespoke to our estate demand profile and operating model, giving flexibility, control, and competitive edge across the U.K. and Germany. It's powered by an algorithm trained on large datasets run by a lean, highly skilled central team, optimizing pricing at scale across the estate and informing decision-making in marketing and distribution. Let me illustrate using an example week from FY 2026. Months out, our data signaled robust occupancy, so pricing was set to optimize rate. As the week approached, the tech monitored by the team repriced many times a day to balance occupancy and rate. The result, high occupancy and rate growth, resulting in RevPAR up 4%, outperforming the market by 1.5 percentage points.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

This automated process runs across all sites and stay dates with prices refreshed multiple times a day, meaning hundreds of millions of changes each year. The system is central to our market outperformance of 1.1% in FY 2026, further application of AI will only improve speed and impact. Room upgrades are a meaningful growth driver. For example, we now have over 3,000 Premier Plus rooms offering enhanced room at an average premium of GBP 12-GBP 14. We are rolling out quickly, especially through AGP, where Premier Plus accounts for half of all rooms added. Premier Plus revenues grew by over 10% in FY 2026, with plenty more runway. Ancillary revenues are another major opportunity and performing well. Our beds are so loved by guests that many want one at home, bed retail revenues were up 25% year-on-year.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

We're optimizing these ancillary revenues while developing new ones, such as opening up our digital screens in hotels to advertisers and expanding our provision of electric vehicle charging. We're investing to protect guest scores and sustain brand strength in two particular areas. First, refurbishing rooms and upgrading beds, which are critical to giving our guests a great night's sleep. Our latest room format drives strong guest scores and is also faster to clean for our teams. Rolling out our latest food and beverage concept, including across all AGB sites. This proposition achieves higher guest scores and spend per sleeper. We're doing this efficiently. Value engineering our latest room format reduced fit-out cost per room by over 40% while maintaining strong guest scores. We intend for our digital experience to be as valued by guests as the welcome, bed, and breakfast while unlocking revenue and lowering cost.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

This short video neatly shows what it looks like for guest arrival. Guests get more choice and convenience, we create upsell opportunities while driving real revenue efficiency, which Hemant will cover later. This will provide further competitive edge. We have the most extensive kiosk provision of any U.K. hotel operator, and we're the first major U.K. chain to roll out digital keys embedded in the mobile wallet at scale. Finally, we have bold plans to grow Hub, a brand with great potential. Hub reaches underserved segments like international tourists, widening our addressable customer base to open up new sources of demand. The proposition comprises compact rooms with smart features located in the heart of the city, all powered by a slick digital journey. Once discovered, it resonates strongly and outperforms the wider competition. Simply put, guests love Hub. Performance has been impressive.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

Our 19 open sites across London and Edinburgh generate high returns with scope to roll out across the U.K. and in European cities like Berlin, where we secured our first site. We can accelerate Hub commercial performance through brand, marketing and trading optimization. We're investing to drive awareness and demand while selectively broadening distribution to expand our reach, particularly for international visitors. We believe Hub can achieve RevPAR parity with Premier Inn with a dedicated team now trading the estate. In parallel, we're developing new room types and rates to grow ARR and sharpening merchandising and photography to showcase the product online. By increasing focus, momentum has really begun to build. Take Edinburgh, where pre-optimization we traded in line with market. Since we've seen a step change in our revenues. This strengthens our confidence to roll out beyond the U.K., beyond London, across the U.K. and in Germany.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

To wrap up, the market has been challenging, our commercial model and actions have strengthened and extended our performance. Our highly skilled teams are pulling all levers to adapt. Near-term visibility is limited, but our booked position into summer is positive. We're confident in what we can control. A strong proposition, a powerful direct model, and a clear plan driving positive like-for-like sales momentum, sustaining market outperformance and unlocking more value over time. That gives you a sense of how we're driving revenues. I'll now pass over to Hemant, who's going to share the secret behind our efficiency program.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Thanks very much, Joe. No videos in my bit, I'm afraid that would cost too much. I'm now going to talk to you about our highly successful efficiency plan, something in which I take real pride and which reinforces our position as a world-class operator underpinning our low-cost value for money proposition. I often get asked how we keep making efficiencies in our business year in, year out. Surely we'll run out of ways to save without impacting the guest proposition. I even get challenged that we can only do so because we must be highly inefficient in the first place. The reality is we are in a unique position operating over 90,000 rooms across the U.K. and Germany, which allows us to have an always-on cost reduction program that other hotel operators cannot replicate.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Our level of day-to-day activity and therefore scope to reduce cost is enormous. We service over 15 million rooms every year, each one taking approximately on average, 23 minutes and 53 seconds to clean. We launder 135 million items of linen and serve over 20 million breakfasts per annum. All of which means we have a substantial operating cost base of 1.7 billion GBP. This creates opportunity, but it's our integrated model that allows us to drive significant and sustainable cost savings, operating a lean and agile cost model, which makes it very hard for others to compete with us. Driving efficiencies is deeply embedded in our business culture, part of how we do business every day, and we're continuously finding new ways of working that helps to drive material savings without impacting our guest experience.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

As I said before, there isn't one silver bullet that drives our efficiency program. It's a large number of smaller initiatives that add up to a material cost saving. In 2023, we undertook a detailed review of our cost base to set up the next five years of our efficiency plan. We analyzed every single cost line in the business, established every cost driver and benchmark best practice across multiple industries. From that, we derived a long list of potential programs and prioritized them based on cost and disruption to implement, long-term cash benefit and guest impact. This is what has allowed us to continue to stretch our efficiency targets over the past few years and will allow us to do so for the next few years as we continue to update this work.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Additionally, the high inflation we've seen over the past three years creates opportunity to take even more costs out of the business. We regularly reassess our cost-saving initiatives, and projects that were not previously feasible can become viable when rising costs justify investment or because developing technology or evolving processes are able to unlock further savings. With a strong track record of unlocking material efficiencies through multiple initiatives across all areas of our business, helping to offset inflation across our U.K. cost base. In financial year 2026, thanks to the innovation of our teams, we were able to accelerate some of our initiatives and delivered better than expected cost efficiencies of GBP 83 million. Vitally, we did this without compromising the guest experience.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

As you can see, we maintained consistently high guest scores whilst also driving a real step up in savings. You can see here just a couple of examples of how we've achieved record levels of efficiencies over the last financial year. In the first half of 2025, 2026, we transformed our food and beverage distribution, hugely simplifying our supply model that is now better tailored to our needs, but crucially is also driving significant product cost and distribution savings as well as operational benefits. We did this seamlessly with no interruption to our product availability on site. We also launched AI-enabled guest support, reducing inbound call traffic with 1 million fewer calls to our hotels and contact center in just over six months. This not only improves the guest experience, but also frees up our team's time for more rewarding and value-adding work.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Looking ahead, over the next few years, we'll continue to use technology to deliver benefits for our guests and drive further operational efficiencies across our hotels and support center. In the future, we'll have a more seamless digital journey for guests whilst further automating low-value tasks for our hotel teams and support functions underpinned by more AI-driven decision-making. This will enhance the guest experience, deliver incremental revenue opportunities, more empowered teams, and increased cost efficiencies. Improvements to our digital journey are already driving efficiency in our operating model. As Joe has already outlined, we're in the process of transforming the guest check-in experience across our hotels. By having guests check in online and via self-service kiosks, we're simplifying and speeding up the arrival process, improving their experience whilst releasing our teams to complete other tasks.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

With over 90,000 door locks now upgraded in the U.K., we're beginning the rollout of digital wallet mobile room keys this year, further streamlining the guest journey with early trials already receiving a positive response. Technology will also help us unlock future savings in the day-to-day running of the business across operations, housekeeping, and food and beverage. We're introducing more real-time tools and automation in housekeeping to increase efficiencies. In food and beverage, a new end-to-end technology platform will enhance operational control and unlock future revenue and margin opportunities. Taken together, these technology-driven cost initiatives are expected to deliver material cumulative cost savings by financial year 2031.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

We're really proud of our reputation as a low-cost, high-value for money operator. We can go further and see significant opportunity to drive more costs out of the business in response to high levels of inflation while maintaining the guest experience. Having already accelerated savings into financial year 2026, we've again reviewed our initiatives and are today increasing and extending our largest ever cost efficiency program. Over the life of the new five-year plan, we'll deliver a cumulative GBP 250 million of cost savings from FY 2027 to FY 2031. This is a material step up because it represents an increased proportion of our total cost base that will of course reduce as we execute our Accelerating Growth Plan. Thank you. I'll now hand over to Erik to provide an update on our progress in Germany and then outline our exciting ambitions today.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Thank you, Hemant. Guten Morgen. I'm Erik Friemuth, CEO of the Premier Inn Germany business. I joined Whitbread just over two years ago from TUI, where I led the group's hotels and resorts, as well as the marketing and sales functions. I bring more than 20 years in marketing and sales, including serving as chief marketing officer at Vodafone. We've made excellent progress in Germany and have transformed the business over the last three years. We now have a model that works, and our overall level of returns are masking that some of our sites, whilst not yet mature, have already reached double-digit return on capital, proving that our model can and is working.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Whilst we have grown quickly and have a fantastic product, we are not yet where we need to be, and so we are making some significant changes to our approach, changes that will accelerate cash flow and returns. I'm going to start with a short video that brings to life the journey we've been on as a business and the progress we've made so far.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

We opened our first Premier Inn in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2016, a bold step into one of Europe's largest hospitality markets. In less than a decade, we have become a well-established and profitable business, building strong momentum. Entering a new market as a new brand is never easy, and we have already learned a huge amount, helping us to improve our execution and adapt our product for the German market.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Today, we have 71 open hotels, all of which are high quality, offering guests a fantastic night's sleep at an attractive price. We are committed to being the employer of choice in the mid-scale and economy hotel segment, investing in talent development and instilling a great business culture. Our product is proving popular and attracting high guest scores, putting us on par with some of our longer established branded competitors. Having reached profitability in fiscal year 2026 and with a sizable national network, we are now focused on increasing cash flow and accelerating returns. We are focused on delivering a fantastic guest experience at a great price, a combination that can deliver attractive long-term returns. Yeah, we are excited about Germany. It remains a significant growth opportunity for the group.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

The investment case is highly attractive with a large fragmented market where no brand has more than 3% share. As in the U.K., the independent sector is in long-term decline. Germany has a large short-stay domestic market with a balance of business and leisure demand. It is also one of the world's largest trade fair markets, meaning that event nights are a key feature accounting for over 20% of revenues. Our journey to profitability has taken longer than expected. Whilst external factors have had an impact, some of our past decisions have also contributed to our performance, and we've learned a lot over the last 10 years. However, over the last three years, we have completely transformed our business and are confident that our model will drive growth and deliver attractive long-term returns.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

We now have a much clearer understanding of what works in Germany, meaning we have been able to accelerate the maturity of newer openings and reduce the cost of converting sites to Premier Inn, two important drivers of strong financial returns. Secondly, we now have a senior leadership team based in Germany and have really tailored our product to the German guest, optimizing our proposition and approach. Finally, we have transformed our commercial strategy, operating now a multi-channel approach with dedicated event pricing strategies that are having a significant and positive impact on our commercial performance. We have hit profitability in financial year 2026, which is a key milestone, and our focus now is on accelerating cash flows and returns, all underpinned by our refined model, which is working well. Our new cohorts prove this.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

By segmenting the estate into smaller cohorts based on year of opening, you can see that our new openings are delivering higher levels of RevPAR and more quickly than previous cohorts. This gives us real confidence that we are translating our learnings into positive trading performance and better financial results. Our cohort of more established hotels is performing very strongly, underpinning our confidence in our opportunity in Germany. On the left-hand side, you can see that RevPAR and profit per room are continuing to grow. On the right-hand side, the chart shows the return on capital employed that we are getting from these hotels and our view of how this will improve over the next five years. In financial year 2026, we reached approximately 9% return on capital employed. We expect to reach double-digit returns this year. This is not the end goal.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

As these sites continue to mature, by financial year 2031, we expect them to reach returns of more than 15%. Our Hamburg catchment is a prime example of our model working well. A key city, lots of demand, and where we have been able to secure great properties at the right price, increasing our density and scale to drive strong financial performance. We have six open hotels in Hamburg, of which 50% are freehold. Whilst these sites are not yet mature, they are already delivering high levels of RevPAR ahead of our wider German estate. In aggregate, profits at the site level were GBP 12 million in financial year 2026, and we are extremely pleased that the catchment as a whole is already delivering double-digit returns.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Our Hamburg St. Pauli Hotel was a new build freehold site that has been open and trading for four years. It is already delivering RevPAR ahead of our wider Hamburg catchment with high levels of profit at a site level and double-digit returns on capital. Since the year end, we have opened another site, taking us to seven in total, and our increasing scale and density in Hamburg is allowing us to drive efficiencies. Our model is now working in Germany. We have a national presence, our product is popular with guests, and we have a powerful commercial strategy. While there is no one size fits all formula for success, we now know what works and what doesn't, and have three main levers to do this, starting with our portfolio strategy. A detailed review of our existing portfolio has identified our top priorities for future growth.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Having tried a few different things in the past, we have a clear focus on formats and locations which we know deliver the best returns. Typically, these are larger hotels and prime city center locations and acquisitions that are appropriately priced. As a result, we are making some significant changes to our growth strategy. By optimizing our open portfolio and at the same time reducing and reprioritizing our capital spend towards opportunities that deliver the highest returns, we will accelerate our financial performance. Another key change is that all future growth will now be funded either through recycling of existing freeholds or through new leaseholds. While this will moderate the pace of room and profit growth to full year 2031, it will significantly reduce our capital intensity, increase cash flow, and accelerate returns on capital.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

While optimizing our open portfolio and improving the quality of our committed pipeline, we will still deliver significant growth for rooms over the next five years. In financial year 2027, we will open over 2,000 new rooms across Germany. With nearly 12,000 open rooms at the year-end, we expect to have 18,000 rooms open by financial year 2031. As I said, we continue to see significant long-term potential with the long-term ambition to become the number one hotel brand in Germany. However, for now, we are focused on driving cash flow and returns. I will now turn to our multi-channel strategy. We are making great progress in building the Premier Inn brand. Our average brand awareness increased to 19% last year, and as you can see here, we are closing the gap to our competitors.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Our high-quality proposition is resonating well, and on the right-hand side, you can see that we are driving great guest scores, but we need to push harder to grow our customer base even further. We have a unique brand positioning in Germany, focused on a great night's sleep, which we know is a key priority for our guests. As you saw on the last page, our investment in marketing is driving higher awareness of our product and brand, and we operate at using a digital-first approach complemented by other channels. Second, as is the case in the U.K., we want to make sure that our guests get the best experience when they book with us direct. By enhancing the Premier Inn website and app, we have seen growth in both conversion and channel share versus last year.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Online check-in is now available at all of our sites, with the rollout of mobile room keys starting this year. At the same time, we are refining our business-to-business proposition with local account management for our growing number of customers. Finally, we are broadening our distribution to maximize reach, allowing us to drive brand awareness and increase RevPAR growth. Online travel agents are a key part of the German market and provide access to a significant number of both domestic and international guests, supporting volume growth. Moving on now to our commercial performance. Our commercial program has been completely transformed and is driving increased revenues and contributing to our strong performance versus the market, but there is more for us to go after. We are continuing to improve our trading strategies, in particular for event nights. Our more established hotels have outperformed the market on event nights this year.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

With our total estate broadly in line, this is a great result and shows the changes we are making are working with a large step up versus last year. Ancillary revenues have seen strong growth versus last year, and we are enhancing our online offer to include product add-ons such as early check-in. We are also adding to our onsite offer with an increased focus on food and beverage and our self-service shops that are available at our sites. These are resonating well with guests and generating incremental revenue. With a strong commercial strategy and the improvements we are making, we expect to continue to outperform the wider mid-scale and economy market in Germany. What does this all mean for our German business over the next five years? We see significant growth potential, and by financial year 2029, we expect that Germany will turn cash flow positive.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

By financial year 2031, we expect to reach 18,000 rooms, becoming one of Germany's largest hotel brands. With our growing estate increasing maturity, we expect to reach a network RevPAR of more than EUR 83 and deliver incremental adjusted profits of GBP 65 million. In the same year, we also expect to reach double-digit returns on our total open portfolio. With reduced capital spend, growth through leaseholds, and by refocusing on proven formats, our new five-year plan will accelerate our financial performance and maximize financial returns. We continue to see significant potential in Germany beyond financial year 2031, with a more capital-light approach, we can continue to grow our network in a more efficient way, reducing capital intensity and driving higher cash flow and returns, showing that we can travel internationally.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

As we have been presenting for quite a while, we'll take a break. When we resume, Hemant will talk you through property and capital allocation, as well as the financials and guidance before Dominic concludes our presentation, and we can move to Q&A. Thank you.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

[Break]

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Shall I start that again? Sorry. I'm now gonna talk you through our property strategy and capital allocation framework and the changes we're making as part of our new five-year plan. First, while Dominic and Mark both spoke on this earlier on, I wanted to remind you of the commercial and financial benefits of our flexible property approach. Our operational control means we can optimize and maximize returns from a site, for example, via AGP, so that once mature, we can recycle the capital and reinvest in high-returning growth opportunities. Our strong balance sheet and flexible approach means we're well-placed to secure the best sites in the best locations, whether freehold or leasehold, while minimizing the risk of cannibalization so that we can drive high capital returns.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

By using our property expertise, we improve asset quality and realize significant development profits as we expand our estate. A property backed balance sheet supports our strong financial covenant, helping to secure more favorable terms with landlords and financing terms with lenders. Our property valuation value creation cycle is summarized here. Our already strong covenant means we can secure high-quality sites to generate excellent returns, which in turn attracts outside funding and offers us a chance to recycle capital into further high-returning growth, the cycle continues. As a reminder, we segment our estate into five distinct categories depending on the hotel asset's maturity.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

As a site moves through to further development or yield potential, we look to recycle capital to drive even higher returns. Today, around 20%-30% of the estate sits in the yield potential grouping, with 30%-40% in further development potential. Currently, a significant proportion of our estate is still in the opportunity for value creation category, including sites that we are optimizing through the proposed extension of the Accelerating Growth Plan. As the project completes over the next few years, those hotels will move into further development and yield buckets, unlocking more opportunities to recycle capital and allowing us to reinvest further into further growth. Freehold recycling is an important enabler of our plans, allowing us to fund future growth while materially reducing capital intensity and remaining investment grade.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

In FY 2026, we completed the sale and leaseback of 22 hotels, generating GBP 282 million of proceeds at attractive yields. This includes our new hub at the Old Bailey, for which we received GBP 57 million in cash, demonstrating our ability to realize value. Our new five-year plan assumes that by FY 2031 we'll recycle GBP 1.5 billion of freehold property via sale and leasebacks and other disposals, which will fully fund the next five years of capital growth. Our capital allocation framework is unchanged. Our disciplined approach is focused on delivering sustainable, attractive returns and seeks to strike an appropriate balance between investing in high returning growth opportunities and returning excess capital to shareholders. As a reminder, there are four priorities in the framework. First, maintaining an investment-grade credit rating is a source of commercial and strategic advantage for us.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

We will keep our lease-adjusted leverage below our threshold of 3.5x. Clearly, we'll continue to invest in the fabric of our estate to maintain our high-quality guest experience, but our focus will be on investing in high returning growth opportunities such as AGP and using proceeds from property-related disposals to fund all future growth. Third, continue to grow in dividends in line with earnings. Lastly, returning excess capital to shareholders. Dominic touched on this earlier. Our asset-backed balance sheet is an important source of competitive advantage. By operating within our leverage threshold, we remain investment-grade, giving us access to funding at lower marginal costs and putting us in a stronger competitive position when securing freeholds and signing leases.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

It also gives us resilience and flexibility through the cycle and supports an efficient balance sheet, allowing us to deploy capital into high returning growth opportunities rather than holding excess cash. Whilst the group will continue to own a substantial amount of freehold real estate, we can reduce the proportion held from around 50% of sites today to operate in the longer term in a range of between 30% and 40% and continue to benefit from all of the advantages I've just outlined. It's important to note that below a certain level of leasehold adjusted leverage, in order to remain investment grade, the group would have to start holding increasing levels of cash, creating a natural limit in terms of freehold and leasehold mix beyond which the balance sheet would become increasingly inefficient.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

By operating in this range of between 30%-40%, we will continue to have a good base of freehold property which we can then recycle in the future to ensure we don't miss out on high-returning growth opportunities. Our new five-year plan is designed to maximize shareholder returns over the medium-to-long term. One of our key strengths is our ability to drive substantial levels of operating cash flow. We'll continue to do so over the life of the plan. As Joe's already mentioned, continuing to invest in our product helps to ensure we sustain our high-quality guest experience and our market-leading position. We'll invest approximately GBP 1 billion over the life of the plan into our physical estate as well as technology to further enhance our business.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

By moderating our pace of growth and focusing on the highest returning projects, we'll reduce our total gross capital spend by GBP 1 billion by FY 2031 compared with our previous plan. All of our future high returning growth CapEx will be funded through recycling GBP 1.5 billion of freehold property alongside a greater mix of leasehold growth, reducing upfront capital requirements. As a result, net CapEx will significantly reduce to GBP 200 million-GBP 250 million per annum, down from GBP 500 million previously, representing more than a GBP 1 billion reduction in net CapEx versus our previous plan.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

With increasing margins from the initiatives you've already heard about, coupled with a reduction in net capital intensity, we expect that our return on capital will increase significantly to generate GBP 2 billion of free cash flow that will be available for shareholder returns through a combination of dividends and share buybacks.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

I'll now turn to our FY 2027 current trading update and outlook before I take you through guidance for our new five-year plan. In the U.K., positive trading momentum has continued into the current trading period, with total accommodation sales up 2% and RevPAR growth of 1% versus last year. Our forward book position is ahead of last year with positive peak leisure demand supported by a strong events calendar. With the continued impact of our commercial initiatives, we remain confident in maintaining a healthy RevPAR premium versus the market. F&B sales were down in line with our expectations, reflecting the impact of our Accelerating Growth Plan.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

In Germany, total accommodation sales were up 9% versus last year, with positive impact from continued estate growth. The market has been impacted by a reduced events profile versus last year, and increased levels of occupancy were offset by low room rates, resulting slightly lower RevPAR for the total estate and more established cohort versus last year. However, we continue to outperform the wider M&E market on both accommodation sales and RevPAR. Looking forward, we have a positive forward book position and are confident that we can drive further RevPAR growth. We've also now updated our financial year 2027 guidance.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

I'll talk you through some of the key parts, but a more detailed summary can be found in the appendix to the presentation. The phasing of new room projects means that we expect to open 1,000 new rooms in the U.K., as well as 750 new AGP extension rooms. In Germany, with our latest acquisition and pipeline openings, we expect to open around 2,300 rooms this year. The proposed extension of the AGP to include all remaining restaurants will result in a PBT reduction of GBP 40 million in FY 2027, which will more than offset positive progress from our original plan, resulting in a net PBT reduction of GBP 10 million.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

In Germany, we expect underlying PBT growth of GBP 10 million before one-off costs of GBP 10 million, primarily in relation to new openings in the year associated with recent additions to our portfolio. As a result of the ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, we're guiding to a GBP 5 million reduction in PBT in relation to hotels operated by our joint venture in the United Arab Emirates. Finally, we'll maintain net CapEx between GBP 200 million-GBP 300 million through recycling GBP 450 million-GBP 500 million of freehold property this year to help fund our network expansion on our extended AGP. Finally, turning to our new five-year plan that includes three initiatives within our control that combine to drive GBP 275 million of incremental profit before tax.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

In the U.K., we expect the impact of Business Rates to be approximately GBP 110 million on our like-for-like estate by FY 2029. As we've outlined today, we have key levers within our control that will drive an increase in our financial performance over the next five years. The combination of new high returning rooms in the U.K., the execution of the extended Accelerated Growth Plan, and our refocused growth plans in Germany means that we're confident delivering GBP 275 million of incremental profit contribution by FY 2031 across these three initiatives. We can't control market growth or gross cost inflation, so this will all assumes that our U.K. like-for-like sales growth plus efficiencies offset U.K. cost inflation and finance costs.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

To bring this to life across the next five years, our GBP 250 million of cost efficiencies will offset approximately 3% of gross cost inflation per annum on our GBP 1.7 billion U.K. like-for-like cost base. Albeit this percentage will increase as we complete the extended AGP. Therefore, if gross cost inflation were above 3%, every 1% of U.K. like-for-like sales growth would need to be offset by 1% of additional cost inflation, something we have been able to achieve over the last 15 years. This increase in incremental profits together with the changes we're making to capital allocation mean that we expect to deliver an increase of 500 basis points on Group ROCE, driven by both operational performance but also the increasing leasehold mix of our estate and unlock GBP 2 billion for shareholder returns by FY 2031.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

We're confident that with the plans we've outlined today, we'll drive increased margins and returns over the life of our new five-year plan. I'll now hand back to Dominic for his closing remarks.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Thank you, Hemant. We have covered a lot today. So before we open up to Q&A, I'm just going to do a brief summary. Whitbread has a great platform to build on. Premier Inn is a clear market leader in the U.K. with a growing national presence in Germany. Our Hub brand is going from strength to strength, and we continue to see significant growth potential with these brands and these markets. We are making some big changes to our approach, changes that will increase margins and returns without compromising our financial resilience or longer term growth prospects. This is a bold and achievable plan that focuses on the things that we can control. With the exit from our remaining branded restaurants, we will strengthen our market leading position in the U.K. and become a 100% pure-play focused hotel business.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We'll drive like-for-like sales momentum through our strong commercial plan and increase cost savings even further through our efficiency program. We're also making some big changes in Germany, where we still see huge potential. With a refocused growth plan, we will accelerate cash flow to become cash flow positive in full year 2029 and reach double-digit returns for our entire Germany network by full year 2031. Our model remains the right one for us. We can say that confidently because we've done a lot of work to test it. It's a powerful model and has delivered our success to date. With our plans today, including recycling more of our property and reducing our capital intensity, we can improve it further and increase group returns by over 500 basis points.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Our plan will create significant value and generate GBP 2 billion of free cash flow available for shareholder returns. Our commitment to you today is that with this new five-year plan, we are gonna go further and faster to deliver for our shareholders. Thank you for listening. Hemant and I will now take your questions with our team here to provide more detail if needed. I'll now hand over to Peter Reynolds, our IR director, who's delighted to host the Q&A.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Never have I felt more uncomfortable. Thanks, Dominic. Okay, if you could please wait for the microphone. Kitty will bring you a microphone. Obviously, we've got a lot of people watching online. If you could wait for the microphone and say who you are and your institution that you're from, and if you could please limit it to two questions, that would be great. Jamie.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

It was like a reflex test. Very impressive.

[Jamie Rollo, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Thank you. Jamie Rollo from Morgan Stanley. The first question is on AGP. You've added about 200 units to the program. The PBT impact is still GBP 100 million. There's still around 3,000 extension rooms. I appreciate the timescale's a bit different, and you've done some already. Have you sort of reined back the original AGP plan, or was this the second cohort just perhaps less impactful at the bottom line 'cause it's a higher, it's a higher returning, I guess, or less loss-making segment already? On Germany, you talked a lot in the U.K. about the alternative models you've looked at, selling the brand, selling the property. I guess you can't do those in Germany really.

[Jamie Rollo, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

What alternative models have you looked at for Germany, and what happens there if you don't hit the targets?

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Yeah, let me. Thanks, Jamie. Let me cover the AGP question first, and then Hemant will probably build on it, and then same approach for Germany. I mean, it was really interesting listening to that presentation. I don't know if you found, but when Simon talked about the Accelerating Growth Program, it becomes crystal clear why it's the right thing for our business. Removing the drag of the lower returning restaurants, investing in an improved guest experience overall, which by the way, we now know our guests really like because we're partway through the first part of the Accelerating Growth Program. Really genuinely making a better product for our customers, but also driving significantly improved financial returns for that.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Categorically, it's the right decision for our business, and we become a simpler business with a better product, a better product overall. To answer your question specifically about the first tranche of it, I mean, we're a year further down. As in we're a year into the initial program. Overall, our learnings from that program are that it has performed better actually than we expected overall. The commercial results are really strong, and the guest proposition scores are better actually than we hoped. As Simon mentioned, we've learned quite a lot through the first phase of this program. We've made some adjustments. Net net overall, our confidence is higher today than it was when we first launched the program, and our results from the initial sites from the first Accelerating Growth Program are better than we expected.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

The reality is through this extending the program, we could have added more extension rooms potentially. We have taken a ruthless returns-led focus, and hopefully that's come through very clearly in the presentation today. Therefore, the rooms that we've landed on for this extended part of the program we think is absolutely optimal for maximum return, maximizing returns overall for the customer. Hemant, anything else you wanna?

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Yeah, just building on that, Jamie. I mean, the original program was going to generate GBP 70 million of PBT improvement. If you remember, that's what we talked about. Obviously, in the first year, we saw something like a GBP 30 million reduction that reversed. The, we're actually going from GBP 70 million to GBP 100 million program. If you look at it from last year when we were GBP 30 million, that's the GBP 100 million. It's two different things. It's not. Just to make sure we're comparing like for like. We have tweaked the original program as well as part of this. It was going to be 3,500 rooms. We've opened 600 already.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Now the cumulative program is gonna get to 3,600 rooms, so you can therefore, we have reduced the original program. We thought about Business Rates. You know, as Dominic says, a very ruthless approach on making sure that we are prioritizing the highest return on capital opportunities for us. Then we built that learning into the second part of the program, which is why, as Dominic says, there's fewer rooms that we're opening. Overall, the return on capital, we've talked about between 15% and 20%.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

I mean, that is, that's probably under, well, it's under calling it because the reality is that's not really including the impact of the fact that we're getting a, we're getting disposal proceeds, and it's also ignoring the fact that we would've had to invest in these branded restaurants we hadn't do. As an incremental decision, it's well over 20% of the return on capital on AGP.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

It's a transformative program for us. It's not an easy decision to make overall as a business. It involves a big change for our business. A seminal moment for Whitbread. It involves a number of job redundancies in our business. Categorically, it's the right decision for our business. It will make us much more profitable, much higher returning, and improve the product for our customers. Hopefully, as you've seen in the presentation, this is a team that is facing into the challenges and making adjustments to our business that is categorically gonna make us stronger moving forward. On Germany, again, hopefully, I mean, you heard from Erik, the progress, I mean, the progress overall we've made in Germany, I think has, is really impressive.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

The transformation that we've led in Germany in the last three years as we've really adapted our commercial as we've learned from what works and what doesn't work, I think is actually spectacular, the job that the team has done. We can stand here with real confidence today to say we have got a model that works. I know in sessions that we've had this before, they, a number of you have really pushed us to say, "Can we see some of that cohort analysis? We wanna see the profitability of the actual hotels." We've shown that today. We've shown that the more mature hotels are comfortably getting to double-digit returns and will grow substantially over the next few years.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We thought, let's use a real example of Hamburg and show you what we're delivering in a city like Hamburg. Larger hotel, city center, profitable, high returning. We've got a model that works in Germany. The alternative kind of models that we looked at, are we right to stay committed to Germany moving forward? We spent a lot of capital in Germany. Are we right to stay committed to Germany moving forward? Should we consider a more radical property operating, PropCo/OpCo split in Germany, for example? It doesn't work in Germany for exactly the same reasons that it doesn't work in the U.K. Exiting the business in Germany is not the right thing.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We've worked out how Germany, how to make Germany work, and we think we're gonna drive significant shareholder value over the next few years through showing Germany the positive trajectory of profitability and returns. It was really important that we made some changes, and that's what we've spoken about today. Those changes that we've made, both in terms of how we operate our business, the commercial model, the operating model, the benefiting from the scale, but also things like reducing our capital intensity, creating a more leasehold product moving forward. The capital invested in Germany moving forward is gonna be significantly lower, but also return significantly higher. That's why we remain committed to Germany. We've made adjustments to the program, but we stand here feeling very confident about the business that we've built.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Thank you. Next question, Richard Clarke, just there, please.

[Richard Clarke, Analyst at Bernstein]

Thanks, Peter. Richard Clarke from Bernstein. Two questions. I guess just firstly on the GBP 1.5 billion of property disposals you talk about, I guess that's less some restaurant disposals. Have you already identified those sites? And would you say those are going to be low yield London Southeast, or will you have to sell some of the sort of more regional sites at higher yields to get to that number? Is all of the purchasers of those sites care about in terms of covenant is the Fitch number rather than things like rent cover? Are there any other guardrails that are looked at by the potential purchasers of those properties? Then second question, just following up on Germany.

[Richard Clarke, Analyst at Bernstein]

I guess we can understand the Business Rates and the labor inflation were the kind of catalysts of a change in thinking on the U.K. What was the catalyst of a change in thinking on Germany to slow down the growth? What's changed in Germany over the last six months?

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Hemant, do you wanna take the first part of the question, and I'll pick up the second part?

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

I will. I will. I'll also ask Mark to kinda like elaborate and correct me.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Okay.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

When I get it wrong. Effectively, yeah, I showed you the different buckets that we put properties into depending on their maturity. The reality is, we, you know, it's a five-year program, so we don't know exactly, which, I mean, you can tell me. If you might, Mark might know exactly which sites he thinks. You know, it's likely to be sites across our entire portfolio. I'll let Mark elaborate on that. On what, and also in terms of what potential buyers would be interested in. They look at more than just a, you know, they look at our covenant as a whole.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

They'll look at other measures as well, specifically depend on, you know, like, such as rent cover, depending on the specific site that we're selling. Mark, I'll let you.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

Yeah. When we're choosing the properties to start with, we put them through a very comprehensive process. We look at our entire estate that's freehold or long leasehold. We take out several groups of properties that either we're going to sell or that we want to retain for various reasons, as we showed on the funnel graph. We end up with a large portfolio, some of which then has operational opportunities to redevelop the AGP, et cetera. There are this large proportion at the bottom where we can select from, which is substantial, and we want to do it over multiple years. We're also thinking about how do we blend portfolios over multiple years rather than go down one route in one year and then find the next year we'd rather have a different mix of properties.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

The answer also is, I think, different buyers have different expectations. The overseas markets, some of the sovereign wealth money is more targeted at London, Edinburgh, Dublin, where yields are more prime, capitalization rates are higher, they expect a different type of model. Some of the portfolios we've done in the last few years are more regional based, the yield reflects those, which is why we've shown the blended yield that comes out at just being over, just over 5%. We're sort of matching product to buyer at a price that works for both parties. Buyer expectations, typically they are looking at our rent cover. They're looking at our current financial performance, which we share with them.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

They're looking at our projections, and they're making sure that the rent that we're agreeing to and the lease terms that we're signing up to and the indexation on the rent is something that we can afford to do for the next 2five years. We're quite cautious, and we put a high rent cover, as in a lower rent as a proportion of our performance, to make sure that we, even if we just assume that our revenues are going up by 2% or 3%, we've got lots of protection over the rent line. They're really well covered. The rest is just building fabric and some of the usual property DD you'd expect them to do around the property itself.

[Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International at Whitbread]

They are looking at a covenant play and the strength of the tenant that supports that long-term rent cover.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Hemant. I mean, with the strength, this is why, you know, one of the points we've underlined today is the core strength of the Premier Inn brand and the financial covenant of Whitbread. I do remember a session, a results session a couple of years ago where we got a lot of questions about our ability to execute on sale and lease back, and there was some skepticism about our ability to do that. I think what Mark and Hemant have shown really well over the last 18 months is the momentum that we've got in creating a very strong sale and lease back at really attractive returns. The ability then to recycle that money at attractive Cap rates into high returning projects like accelerating growth that we're talking about there. We're talking 15%-20% returns.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

It is a, we believe, a very smart way for us to increase the size of our business, the profitability of the business, and returns for shareholders overall as we grow our business and we produce more free cash flow. On your question about, on your question about Germany, I mean, I suppose the first thing to say is we really have learnt an enormous amount about operating in Germany since our first hotel opened in 2016. Erik touched on it a bit in his section. When we first went into Germany, we took a U.K. mindset. We were hugely successful in the U.K., and we felt we could mirror that model, replicate that model in Germany. We went direct sell only.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We ran quite a lot of our business there because it was small, obviously, when we started from the U.K. We had a much more U.K.-oriented product. One of my observations coming back into the business is, we needed to have a more German focus on how we're running that business. Now, what we did extraordinarily well, going into Germany was get great locations and great quality hotels, and that is really the bedrock now for the strength of the brand and the strength of our customer proposition. It's this learning over the last few years of adapting our commercial model, of widening our distribution, of widening our product. We are now very clearly able to see which are the sites that really perform the best and which ones don't perform quite as well.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Going into Germany pre-COVID, we had to buy our way into Germany to some extent, you know, we paid a reasonable amount in some of the acquisitions. Some of those acquisitions included hotels that probably aren't absolutely bullseye compared to what we think works now moving forward. As we did this hugely detailed piece of work on Germany over the past over the past few months, our conclusions were really clear, which is fundamentally, we do have a model that works. It works particularly well in larger city center hotels. We get the benefit of scale, we get strong RevPARs that drive strong profitability. We can make regional hotels work, but they don't generally return as well as these prime or city center-type locations, a bit like Hamburg, which we spoke about today.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We've pivoted our growth strategy to focus more on those formats and those locations. Although there hasn't been a Business Rates challenge in Germany, this is more about us maturing as a business, being very clear we're taking a returns-led focus in Germany. We still think there's strong long-term potential in that, in that market, but we're going to focus on driving the profitability, focusing on sites that we know are going to work, more larger hotels, more city center-type hotels, which will drive returns and free cash flow in Germany, and I think will generate a significant amount of value for shareholders over the next few years.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Thanks, Dominic. Estelle.

[Estelle Weingrod, Analyst at JPMorgan]

Estelle Weingrod, JPMorgan. I have a question on the exit of the 1,500 lower returning hotels in the U.K. Can you just maybe elaborate a bit more? Have they always been below our group average? Have the performance maybe come down? Just trying to understand what has changed. Connected to that, I guess, on the long-term potential, the 125,000 rooms for the U.K., the longer term, given the reduction in room expansion over the next five years, can you just help us understand what gives you comfort on these initial targets? Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Okay. Let me cover both of those questions and then potentially Hemant and Mark might want to build on it. I mean, Mark covered a bit of this in his presentation. Dorchester was an example of a pipeline project or a site that we are gonna exit. Let me be clear. We could open all of those pipeline sites, and actually there would be some profitability from those sites, but they aren't going to be what we think is profitable enough or returning high enough. Hopefully what you've seen today in our plan is we're taking a really clear, focused approach to driving medium-term returns. When we've looked at some of those sites, particularly with the increase in Business Rates, they now fall below our internal hurdles.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We don't talk about what our hurdles are, but they are, they're challenging hurdles. We find sites that will more than, you know, be well above those hurdles. Mark talked about our future pipeline today, things like Hub, London, some of the other city center sites. The sites that we're exiting are sites that generally, because of Business Rates, are now slipped below that hurdle. What we're not gonna do is just carry on regardless and open them. If they're below our hurdle, we'll make a decision to then not open that site because we're also confident with our model, this flexible model, we will find other sites that will be above hurdle. We also can see, and we believe over the next few years, there'll be a bit less competition for these sites as well. You know, the macro environment's a bit challenging.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Interest rates are probably gonna stay a little bit higher for longer. We will be able to cherry-pick the very best sites, and what that means is we will not go for sites that are gonna be, are going to be below hurdle. That's why we've taken that approach there. To answer your question about 125,000 rooms, we categorically believe there is still the potential to get to 125,000 rooms with Premier Inn. This is not a quick desktop piece of work that we did. We did an enormously detailed piece of work on catchment area data and came to the conclusion about the potential for Premier Inn. It's quite an interesting story. Well, I find it interesting.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

15 years ago, we said there was a potential to get to 60,000 rooms in the U.K. At the time, everybody was like, "Impossible." You know, we were at 35,000 rooms at the time. Impossible. We're at 85,000 rooms today and, you know, high returning than we, than we were there. Sometimes from where you stand at this moment, you look at 125,000, would that be possible? The scale of our brand and the quality of our business, and remembering all the things we've announced today is gonna improve our margins and returns more, that will actually make sites more profitable, which will open up more opportunities. This is really important, we're not chasing a growth target for the sake of a growth target.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We are going to do it in a really data-led approach using returns as our filter to get to that number over time. We're not chasing it with a particular timescale. We will get there when we can get there from optimizing overall returns and shareholder returns.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Yeah. Just, just to add a couple of things very quickly, Estelle. You know, Dom talked about the pipeline rooms, but in terms of existing rooms as well, we're obviously. This is something we do all the time and you know, you've seen, we did 500 last year. We came out of effectively. I mean, Mark's example on Manchester where we talked about Deansgate Lock, I think it was. Deansgate, which was a site we developed and we were able to get a good development profit from it. Actually, we were able to migrate the trade from that site to other sites. This is something that my team, Mark's team, we look at all the time, different conurbations where we're looking at the weakest performing hotel.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Can we migrate the trade to somewhere else as and when another opportunity comes up? With the extensions we're doing as well, we're thinking about this kind of thing all the time. It's kind of almost like business as usual. We will continue to do that. Generally, we don't even model it really when we kind of give you the numbers because when we're coming out of those rooms, the relative marginal profitability loss is so low because the migration, we're just modeling the new rooms. We're very good at this. Something we've done for years.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Jaina.

[Jaina Mistry, Analyst at Barclays]

Hi, it's Jaina Mistry from Barclays. Two questions as well. I guess if we're framing this new plan within the current context today, the Strait of Hormuz are still shut. There might be inflation passed through, coming on through the rest of the year. How much buffer or upside is there to your cost savings targets over the next five years? If we are in a situation where the U.K. is in a period of higher inflation, is there a bit of juice left in your plan? Second question, Hemant, I think probably for you. GBP 1.5 billion of sell and leasebacks. That's probably GBP 500 million incremental from your old plan.

[Jaina Mistry, Analyst at Barclays]

Can you just give us a little steer on the additional lease costs that'll flow through your P&L and will hit the bridge over the next five years? Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Thanks, Jaina. Let me answer the first part of the question. Hemant will love me answering it about efficiency. Then I'll hand over to Hemant for the lease costs. A couple of things. I mean, yes, these are uncertain times, aren't they? I mean, it's quite hard to call exactly what's gonna happen with the Iran crisis day to day. One, that underpins one of our decisions, which is to focus on resilience of our business. You know, in uncertain times, having a business that can survive a cyclical world and actually use these periods of dislocation to actually strengthen our business and take advantage of the difficult environment, that is a really core competitive strength of our business.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

The second thing to say is, compared to many consumer businesses out there, we are in a relatively resilient place, actually. You know, we're mostly a domestic hotel business for domestic customers. Should more travelers not fly overseas, for example, because of increased airline prices, you heard from Joe, we have got a very sharp, very advanced commercial model, and we are there for U.K. customers who want to holiday or have weekends or take breaks in the U.K. You know, we see the summer as a period where we will try to make sure we take full opportunity of that and offer our guests what they're looking for.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

I guess the other side of that is exactly where you went, which is, hopefully you're seeing that this is a leadership team that plans for the worst, but actually, you know, always tries to ensure that we deliver ahead of that. That means that we try very hard to stay ahead of things. The efficiency program is one of the ways that we do that. I think Hemant and the team have done an amazing job over the last few years and Hemant touched on it in his script. I mean, this was literally a line-by-line process across a whole cost base of driving efficiencies, and it is part of the core mindset of our business. Remember, we're a budget value business. We take these things really seriously.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We have a track record of over-delivering on our efficiencies number. We will continue that mindset to do everything we can to try to make sure that we continue to maximize our opportunities in the efficiency space. That's what I would say. Hemant?

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Well, I mean, there's not much left to say. You know, Jaina, expecting a CFO in public forum to say how much contingency they've got in their efficiency plan. I think as Dominic says, look, I mean, you saw the process, you know, how we think about this thing. This is just something we do every year and every big business like us, you know, multi-site business. This is the kind of thing they're doing all the time. There will always be efficiencies, and we'll always try and stretch them. We've got a good record of doing that. Yeah, watch this space.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Next question.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Sorry, you asked.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Always here with the interest.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

On sale and leaseback. I mean, the simple answer is GBP 500 million more of sale and leasebacks theoretically is something like... You know, normally that would, you know, cash-wise it would be, let's say, a 5% yield. Because of IFRS 16, you know, there's a premium to that, so it's more like 7%, 8% by the end of the plan. Clearly, there's a lot of phasing within that. We've taken that into account, as you'd expect us to do, we're very comfortable still with the guidance we're giving in terms of what we think achieve, we can achieve overall. Obviously the team can help with some of that phasing and how you might wanna model that.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Thanks. Ivor, over here, please.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Hello. Ivor Jones from Peel Hunt. One of the big punchlines was the expected return of cash to shareholders. Could you perhaps talk as much as you can about the expected phasing of that return? I guess a subset of that question, while the share price is persistently not £40, would you prioritize share buybacks over some capital spend while there's the opportunity, given the potential for improving shareholder returns that way? Thank you.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Okay. Yeah, I mean, look, we haven't given specific phasing. We have said that this year, although, you know, we would expect to pay a dividend in line, well in line with our policy, we're not expecting to do any share buybacks because the high level of capital spend we're gonna have because the extended Accelerated Growth Program, against the phasing of any disposal proceeds we've got from sale and leasebacks. The reality is that our plan is more back-end loaded. We're being honest about that and open about that because the Accelerated Growth Program, you've seen the phasing of the profitability. It's, for us, it's a very high returning and, in my opinion, very low risk program.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

It does mean that we need to invest the capital now, and we'll see the benefits coming through over the next few years. You've seen the phasing as well. We've got in terms of room openings, we've got the bulk of our room openings to come, not this year, but over the next two to three years, and then the maturity of those. There is a little bit of back-end phasing towards that.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

You know that our capital, what our capital allocation framework though is that if we have the ability, you know, we have excess cash, if we have good trading in any particular period of time that generates excess cash for us, 'cause we do generate a lot of cash when trading is strong and it doesn't take much to for us to be able to do that, then what we won't do is squander that. We will be returning to shareholders as soon as we can. I think the important thing is the £2 billion is very much in our control, much more than say, managing cost inflation or the U.K. market because a lot of that is coming from our reduction in capital intensity.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

You know, that is in our control. We can see exactly how we're gonna do that. Clearly it does matter how much, you know, cash flow we're generating from the business every year. All of it with after maintenance CapEx will be available for shareholder returns.

[Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Thanks, Ivor.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Thank you.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

To Tim over on the, sorry, making you run around.

[Tim Barrett, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Thanks. Tim Barrett from Deutsche. Just a question about capital allocation. There's a big block on the on the slide, obviously, is maintenance CapEx, about GBP 1 billion. That feels quite high as a percentage of revenues. Can you talk through whether you reviewed that as part of this program, how you're planning your maintenance CapEx? Just a small thing on Germany. I wanted to understand the extra cost you're talking about this year. Is that a package of hotels? How many? Obviously the implication is you might slip back into a loss potentially. Were you know, how did you feel about doing that at this stage in the development cycle? Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Hemant, do you want to take the first part of the question on maintenance CapEx, and I can cover Germany?

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

There's approximately GBP 200 million a year of maintenance CapEx. Yes, we reviewed everything. We could spend more than that if we wanted to. The reality is that in a business like ours with a mature and maturing estate of hotel rooms, we have to keep investing in the product. Joe mentioned it as part of his presentation. He also showed the chart that supports our RevPAR premium, the YouGov chart that supports our RevPAR premium with our brand at the northeast of the chart looking at quality and value. We're very clear that, and we can see in the numbers that as a hotel ages and as it gets worse, there is a RevPAR impact.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

You know, we're quite methodical about how much we're investing back into the estate, but there's always a tension. As you can imagine, I'm trying to rein that back. Joe's saying, "Let's spend more money," and Simon's saying, "Let's spend more money on refurbishments." There's always a tension, and we're always managing that. Basically we want to spend enough that the, we can maintain the quality of our estate and maintain the guest experience on average. We know that there's always sites that we could be investing in. There is a balance there. We've balanced that off.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

We think GBP 200 million, considering the level of cash flow generation we can make and the margin we make from our estate is reasonable. We know that that actually works for us. In the future, we'll have a tighter estate. We won't have as many branded restaurants. We've taken that into account in our thinking as well. We think the balance is right.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

I mean, Joe covered some of it today in the presentation, one of the strengths of our business is all the data that we get from our customers. Every single site night of every single hotel, we can see exactly how much a customer spent and who that customer was. That enables us to see if a hotel, if the RevPAR is dropping off slightly, we can bench it versus the guest satisfaction scores and break those guest satisfaction scores in things like the proposition or the team or the food and beverage, whatever it is. We can take a very data-led approach to saying, "At this location, actually our RevPAR is being impacted because we haven't done a refurbishment for X years." We do a very careful refurbishment of that site.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

When I say careful, I mean, financially we run this business like we're spending that money ourselves. Joe and Sarah, who's up here, who's done a lot of the work on the room propositions, we felt we were spending a bit too much on the room refurbishment. Our guest scores are high, and we felt we were spending a bit too much. You saw on that chart that we reduced it by 40%. We did that by literally going screw by screw, piece of wood by piece of wood, every single detail of the shower to get that cost of that room done down. What that means is we can now do more rooms versus we did before, which drives higher guest scores, which drives higher RevPAR.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

There are other sites we look at and say, "We aren't gonna do a refurbishment on that site. Actually, the guest scores are still pretty good. And although we haven't done the refurb for a long time, it's actually in pretty good shape." We don't take. Sometimes big corporations, they take uniform views on this. They go, "Every seven years we're gonna do a refurb." We are much more data-led in how we do that, and that's why we can say with confidence that we're spending about the right amount of money. Your second question was around Germany. Erik, I might ask you to build on what I say here.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

The two things that we really wanted to underline in the presentation today was the core of our estate, the model is working. You can see that by the profitability of the more mature hotels and through a catchment like Hamburg, for example. We know why it's working. We know it's generally larger hotels, city center hotels in the right locations, coupled with our guest proposition and the strength of the brand. We also know that this year our assumption is we'll be making a good underlying profit in Germany. We have made a number of acquisitions in Germany. They're mostly leasehold acquisitions for this year. They're mostly leasehold acquisitions. We've got a small collection of hotels that we have bought, and they are bullseye for our model.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We are spending some money on the conversion of those hotels. Very, very sensibly spent money. We're not overdoing the expenditure on those hotels, but they need to feel like a Premier Inn. That has some cost associated with it. Out of that, we will open a set of hotels which are gonna be profitable. They're gonna be strong returns, and they're bullseye locations. For the course of this plan, for the five years, we're really comfortable we're making the right decision on those sites. Erik, anything you want to add?

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Yeah. I mean, maybe just to add on what you said, as you saw on the slide, I mean, we are maturing these new sites much faster than we did in the future, mainly through our multi-channel approach. We are very confident that we will see better results compared to previous cohorts on these hotels that we are gonna add to the portfolio. Secondly, I mean, making a hotel Premier Inn was initially, when the company went into Germany, a big exercise, if I may say so. It needed all to be on day one 100% what this proposition stood for. We are more pragmatic now in doing this, saying, "Let's get into the site.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Let's make sure this is very good serving our guests, but let's not get to gold-plated solution at day one before we open the site. This gives us the opportunity to open the site earlier and then also to monetize the site earlier and then in the first cycle ramping up the distribution and earning the money in. These both things, I think in combination really help us.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Perfect. Thank you, Erik

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

to accelerate the implementation.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Yeah.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Okay. Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Profit and returns-led focus.

[Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany]

Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Underpinned by great guest satisfaction.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

For Kate here, please. Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Okay.

[Kate Sherrill, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you very much. Also, Kate Sherrill from Bank of America. Also two questions from me. First, can I ask about your commercial initiatives and the RevPAR premium? Obviously, you mentioned a number of things that are, you know, resulting in a favorable mixed shift and, you know, including Premier Plus and Hub development. Can you help us understand the incremental, you know, RevPAR uplift you would expect on an annual basis from these initiatives? Is it more like, you know, 10 basis points or 50 basis points or above kind of thing? Then the second question, Dominic, thank you very much for the very transparent communication around the strategic reviews.

[Kate Sherrill, Analyst at Bank of America]

When you mention about the option of sell the brand, I wonder whether there could be a potential buyer out there for the brand that would pay a considerable premium because they see them having better capabilities of rolling out the brand maybe to more franchisees in more international markets. Do you think there's such a buyer out there? Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Okay. Let's take the first part of the question. Joe, I mean, we don't guide on exactly what the initiatives are gonna add up to over the course of the plan. We have a ruthlessly detailed plan internally that benches all of the different initiatives. I mean, we're super excited by the commercial program, because when we look at it and we say, A, the core revenue management capabilities are best in class, and they're only getting better, particularly as we adopt the latest technologies. Then we look at each guest mission and say, How do we maximize the revenue from that mission? The core room revenue, then the ancillary revenues about that, whether that's food or beverage or Rooms with a View or early check-in or late check-out or Premier Plus.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We see multiple opportunities in that area. The third thing is because of our vertical integration, because of our direct relationship with our customers, we can access that extra revenue better and faster than our competitors can. You put that all together and you link it to the really strong team that Joe has got in the commercial function. I think it's super exciting, the opportunities ahead of us. The reason we spent time on this today is you all know the driving of the revenue performance of this business, and as Hemant touched on from a shareholder returns perspective, it's a really important part of our business. That's why we wanted to show you the level of confidence we've got in that. Joe, it's...

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

Yeah. I know it's a really good question. I mean, it's hard to guide on an exact number, but what I would say is, you know, the year has started well. We're hitting the same level of incremental revenue year to date up to week eight that we were hitting last year. We've managed to sustain that and in certain weeks actually exceed it. You know, we're keeping going. I think there's plenty more to come is what I would, you know, give you confidence in. We have a lot of opportunities that we're working on already and are in the plan. The plan isn't a fixed plan that we just lock in for the year. As and when new opportunities, we've got new partner conversations coming on.

[Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer at Whitbread]

You know, there's a couple of opportunities I mentioned now like things like electric vehicle charging, which, we know we're starting to get into. You know, I feel really confident there's plenty more to come and that we know we should be able to sustain the level of out performance that we demonstrated in FY 2026.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Thanks, Joe. Your question about selling the brand. I mean, I'm sure there would be people interested in buying the Premier Inn brand. To your point, it's an exceptional brand. I mean, you know, we're in a unique position with 12% market share in the U.K., we are showing that it can travel internationally with the success that we're having in Germany. There'd be a limit to how much a company would be willing to pay just for the brand. The bigger, the bigger and more important point for us is when we looked at this and we looked at it in a lot of detail, if we sold the brand separately, it would be Whitbread minus that is left.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

The company that bought the brand would probably then distribute and sell the rooms with that brand, and we think we're uniquely placed to optimize revenue and how we sell and distribute the business already. For smaller businesses, selling the brand to a major international player, for example, I can see why that makes sense because suddenly they get access to a global distribution system. Actually, our distribution system in the U.K. is unbelievably good for the Premier Inn brand. Unbelievably good. You know, we have high occupancy. You can see the market outperformance, and we have a core group of loyal customers. Adding into, let's say, a U.S. reward program, for example, that honestly is not going to drive significant benefits for our business 'cause fundamentally, those international guests, are they going to want to stay in 1 of our great hotels in Stoke? Probably not.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

You know, we've got the bulk of our business is actually outside London. Mark said we've got a lot of new hotels opening in London, but we're also a very regional business. We think the model that we've optimized over the years actually is already doing an amazing job of maximizing revenue. You'd then have to believe that overall, selling the brand would be a more value accretive option than us owning the brand ourselves and executing this five-year plan. Whichever way we cut it, the best way to maximize shareholder returns for this business over the next five years is to execute this plan that we're talking you through today. Thank you.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Yeah, Jack, then, yeah. Thank you.

[Jack Cummings, Analyst at Berenberg]

Jack Cummings at Berenberg. First one, just a clarification on Germany. I think you're taking some rooms out of the pipeline, but I don't think there's any closures or disposals. I know you said in the release that some of those earlier pre-pandemic acquisitions haven't kind of met expectations. Any reason for holding on to those assets that are maybe underperforming? The second one, just some of the other hospitality businesses in the U.K. have talked to a pickup in demand for staycations because of the ongoing conflict. Is there anything you can talk to with respect to the demand drivers on the leisure side of your business that you've either got on the books for this summer or that you've already seen? Thank you.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Shall I take the second part of the question, and if you wanna take the first part of the question, Hemant? I mean, as we touched on in our trading statement, we're actually in a good book position for this year moving forward. I know there've been questions out there about the macro environment for consumers. As I said earlier, it's an uncertain world we're in, isn't it? However, I can also see that we could be very well-placed if there is a staycation boom. I'm not gonna stand here and say there's going to be a staycation boom. Nobody knows that right now. Airline prices are going up. Normally, that means fewer people travel.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We're the largest hotel business in the U.K. with over 850 hotels. We are well-placed should more people stay in the U.K. to benefit from that. It's very hard to call. We're in a good book position for summer. Remember, we're quite a late booking market. We're seeing no negative signs currently from the situation that is out there, but we're really mindful of the fact that there are large changes and dislocations happening. I do think if more people stay in the U.K. This year instead of going overseas, we'll be well-placed to take advantage of that. Time will tell on how that pans out. Hemant.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Yeah, the easy answer is we are making closures. You might have missed it as part of Erik's presentation, but you know, we are taking our target down in Germany from 20,000 rooms to 18,000 rooms a year later. Part of that is that we will close some open hotels to optimize the current estate as well.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Okay. Anna.

[Anna Barnfather, Analyst at Panmure Liberum]

Thank you. Anna Barnfather from Panmure Liberum. Just to follow up on Germany, obviously very different from the U.K. with a 40% reliance on OTAs. I wondered what your thoughts are on where that could be reduced to, if it can be reduced, and what the drag on returns it is of paying that sort of fee away.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Yeah, it's a great question, Anna. I mean, we did a lot of work on whether we should widen our distribution in Germany. You know, Erik led that work. Again, we've taken an incredibly data-led view. We started in Germany with the same model that we've got in the U.K., which is direct only. Of course, when you start a hotel brand in a market and you've got five or 10 hotels, your brand awareness is very low. You have to work very hard to get direct bookings. What we did is a number of data-led trials with online travel agents to see whether we were gonna get to incremental customers by widening our distribution. The answer was a categoric yes, it works.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

We get to an incremental customer, and we can drive higher RevPARs and higher profitability by getting to more customers. It's also had the added benefit, and you saw that from the brand awareness slide. Our brand awareness is rising faster than our competitors. Part of the reason for that is actually we're using the third-party distribution to build our brand. Every time a customer goes on Booking.com or Expedia or something like that in Germany, they'll see a Premier Inn brand. If they don't know that brand at that moment, then they'll get to know the Premier Inn brand, and they'll get to experience the brand. Categorically for us, it's helped us bring more guests into our hotels, and it's helped us drive profitability, better RevPAR, better returns.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

The other side of it is, we are driving really strong guest scores in Germany. If you go on booking.com, and you look at the guest scores we're getting from our guests, and it's incredibly transparent, isn't it nowadays? Increasingly, customers when they book a hotel in a new city, they'll just have a look on booking.com or Expedia or whatever, and they'll look at the guest ratings. Well, our average score for booking.com is well north of 8.0. It's generally in the very good to fabulous level, and it's really good value for money. What a wonderful way to get more customers into our hotels and build awareness. In parallel to that, you can imagine we also have a strategy. We want to build a long-term relationship with these customers as well.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

The beautiful thing about Germany is the patterns are quite similar to the U.K. Lots of business customers and lots of multi-trip leisure customers. Building a direct relationship with a customer can also be good for them and good for us. Over time, I'd expect we would continue to use online travel agents in Germany. I think that percentage will probably drop over a medium-term period of time as we build that direct relationship with our guests, things like rolling the app out with digital keys. It creates that direct relationship. I can also see us for the foreseeable future, we'll continue to use a wider distribution.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

At 18,000 rooms in Germany, we are a fraction of the hotel business in Germany, one of the great opportunities of that market, which means that the incremental customers we can get from widening our distribution is really profitable for us.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Thanks, Dominic. I'm just conscious of time. We've probably got last time for a last few.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

I think we're on time, aren't we?

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Sorry. I just wanted to get to Jarrod, just the last question, please.

[Analyst]

Thank you. Good morning or afternoon. Just in terms of maybe an accounting question, I mean, you're basically getting rid of food and bev, so I take it there's no longer any revenue disclosure there. Are you gonna be moving this somewhere for assets held for sale or, you know, are there any write-downs there? Secondly, can you give any guidance on interest cost, you know, just given sale and leaseback, et cetera? Thanks.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

I mean, we can probably follow up. We'd give you know, give you some more detail, kind of go in modeling questions with the team. Yes, there's different definitions for when we make an asset held for sale. We have done that for certain assets, but not for the bulk of the new assets yet because they aren't at the place where they've got an offer on them. I'm oversimplifying. We have, though, written down. As part of the adjusting items for this year that's just gone, that has gone up by GBP 75 million more than it would have been without the second phase of the accelerated growth plan.

[Hemant Patel, CFO at Whitbread]

Then, yeah, on interest, why don't we help you with that? I've mentioned earlier on to Jamie's question that certain leaseback cost, you can roughly assume 8% for a full year of the asset value in terms of the P&L impact of that approximately with an IFRS pre-premium. Then, yeah, obviously, we can help you with the modeling interest cost based on cash balances. We can do that separately if you want, Jarrod.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Okay. Thanks, Hemant. Dominic, do you want to.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

Yeah. I'm really respectful of everybody's time, and we're on time. I'd like to thank everybody for both here in person and online for your. I mean, we find this fascinating, but we're slightly biased. Hopefully, you found this interesting too. We're super excited about this plan. If I just leave you with a few thoughts on this plan, we are reducing our capital intensity. We're gonna increase our profitability. We're going to increase our financial returns for shareholders, and we're gonna take profitable market share in both the U.K. and Germany. That, for us, is a super exciting place to be, and we've got a great team to deliver it. Thank you for your time today, and we really appreciate it.

[Dominic Paul, Group CEO at Whitbread]

As Peter and Hemant have said, any follow-up questions at all, you know where we are. Thank you.

[Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations at Whitbread]

Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Dominic Paul, Group CEO
• Hemant Patel, CFO
• Joe Garrood, Chief Commercial Officer
• Mark Anderson, Managing Director of Property and International
• Peter Reynolds, Director of Investor Relations
• Simon Ewins, Managing Director and Executive Committee Member

Analysts

• Anna Barnfather, Analyst at Panmure Liberum
• Erik Friemuth, CEO at Premier Inn Germany
• Estelle Weingrod, Analyst at JPMorgan
• Ivor Jones, Analyst at Peel Hunt
• Jack Cummings, Analyst at Berenberg
• Jaina Mistry, Analyst at Barclays
• Jamie Rollo, Analyst at Morgan Stanley
• Kate Sherrill, Analyst at Bank of America
• Richard Clarke, Analyst at Bernstein
• Tim Barrett, Research Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Analyst
• Video Narrator