Whitbread plc (WTB) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's Whitbread Q126 Trading Update call. My name is Seb, and I'll be the operator for your call today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A session, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star 2. I will now hand over to Dominic Ball to begin. Please go ahead. Thank you, Seb. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining the call for our 421 Trading Update this morning. I'm joined by Emma Patel, our Group CFO, and we look forward to answering your questions shortly. Hopefully you've had a chance to review the Course 1 release this morning. I'm going to start with a brief overview for those who haven't seen it, and then we'll open up the call for Q&A. Before I touch on the first quarter's performance, I wanted to just say a few words on the excellent progress we're making on our key strategic initiatives that underpin our five-year plan, that are set to deliver incremental profit of at least £300 million by full year 30 and generate more than £2 billion for shareholders. In the UK, we're extending our market leading position through a combination of network expansion, our accelerating growth plan and our ongoing programme of commercial initiatives that mean we are performing ahead of the market. We are on track to deliver the £60 million of cost savings that we have guided for this year as part of our ongoing efficiency programme. And in Germany, the scale, quality and value of our offer is raising our brand awareness at the same time as our hotels and brands are continuing to mature. As a result, we remain on course to hit profitability this year. Now let me turn now to our quarter one performance. As you have all seen from the market data, trading in the first quarter, which ran ...