Whitbread plc (WTB) Q4 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

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. 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 Helen takes you through the full year results in more detail. I will then 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 maximise total shareholder returns over both the medium and the longer term. You will then 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 then 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. There's a lot to be proud of in these results, and we delivered a positive performance that was achieved despite significant external headwinds in the shape of substantial cost increases in the UK. We've been able to ...