JD chief Wetherspoon (JDW. L) criticized the government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, as the bar chain announced its first annual loss in nearly 40 years.
Wetherspoon blamed coVID-19 pandemic functionality and the government’s response, closure and 22-hour curfew had had a devastating effect on businesses.
Tim Martin, president and founder of JD Wetherspoon, said the government had brought “a series of ever-evolving bad thoughts” in recent months.
“These are incredibly difficult for the public and publicans to perceive and enforce,” Martin said in a statement. “None of the new regulations appear to have an apparent clinical basis.
“For example, a table service requirement was introduced, which is costly to implement and undermines the essential nature of pubs for many others. Pubs now have restaurants.
“Customers can perform the payment process in a store, but also in a pub, which is not “scientific”. “
The flank came when Wetherspoon revealed a decrease in sales and profits over the following year. Sales fell 30% to 1. 26 billion pounds ($1. 62 billion) in the 12 months through July 26. The corporation fell to a tax loss of 34. 1 million. compared to a profit of 102. 5 million pounds in 2019.
This is the company’s first tax loss since 1984.
When unique prices are taken into account, JD Wetherspoon lost 94. 8 million pounds. The pub chain had to deal with unique prices of £29. 1 million connected to COVID-19. Costs come with investing in security measures in their pubs and wasting food and drink while the places were closed.
The company’s shares fell more than 12%.
Martin said sales increased over the summer after pub reopening, since then they have declined due to the arrival of curfew at 10pm for host companies last month.
“The recent curfew and the arrival of table service have been detrimental to trade, miserable sales for consumers who place it too ‘faff’, while prices rise significantly,” Martin said.
Sales in the 11 weeks since the end of July are 15% less than last year.
Martin attacked the curfew policy, arguing that pubs are not a primary source of COVID-19 transmission and said that 429 Wetherspoon workers, about 1% of the company’s total workers, had tested positive for the virus since it reopened. similar to “outdoor contacts at work,” Martin said, and the company is unaware of any “transfer of the virus from staff to consumers or vice versa, or between consumers. “
Pressure on Wetherspoon’s business forced her to eliminate 108 tasks at her head office. The chain consults on task losses at its airports.
“Because of regulatory changes, the pubs’ outlook for the rest of the existing fiscal year is even more unpredictable than before,” Martin said.
“Businesses and the entire hotel industry want a more practical and consistent regulatory framework to function – the existing environment of blocking, curfew and evolving regulations and announcements threatens only advertising companies, but the entire economy.
Martin called on the government to adapt regulations closer to those in Sweden, where restrictions on daily life have been much more flexible than the pandemic.
“The erratic British government is jumping off the pillar and enduing and turning any of the regulations, so we are now a quasi-blocking that produces visibly worse effects than Sweden’s, both in terms of fitness and economics,” Martin Martin told me.