HOTEL group Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (M&C) saw shares surge ahead today after figures beat expectations and as sales returned to growth this year.
The firm - which has hotels across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia - said pre-tax profits more than doubled in the fourth quarter to £29.5 million.
Revenues per available room (revpar), a key measure of performance for the industry, dropped 6.1% over the quarter to December 31, marking a significant improvement on previous months.
Shares leapt 13% as M&C confirmed easing conditions and reported an increase in revpar for the first five weeks of 2010, ahead 3.5% across the group.
Kwek Leng Beng, chairman at M&C, said: "We were anticipating stronger demand towards the year end and the actual results for the fourth quarter have exceeded our expectations."
The group added it was "encouraged by the signs of stability in some of our market", but cautioned it was too early to predict the trading performance in 2010.
M&C suffered a challenging first half of 2009 as the global recession hit hotel companies hard, with businesses cutting back on travel and conferencing, and the leisure sector also in decline.
The weakness of the pound and cost-cutting has helped offset some of the trading woes.
But its London hotels continue to suffer. Figures for the first five weeks in 2010 reveal that revpar slumped by 7.5% in London, while increasing by 4.3% in New York and 18.8% in Singapore.
Surrey-based M&C has Copthorne Hotels across the UK, including in Aberdeen, Cardiff, Manchester and Plymouth. It has larger, four and five star Millennium Hotels in London, Glasgow and Reading.
Today’s full year figures shows that revpar fell 16.3% in 2009, while pre-tax profits fell 20% to £81.9 million, although this was better than analysts had been expecting.
Greg Johnson at Shore Capital said recent positive trading may have been driven by the strong Asia performance due to the timing of the Chinese new year, but was encouraging nonetheless and showed welcome signs of stabilisation.
