Wetherspoon secures financing

The company, which has 746 pubs across Britain, also cheered investors by resuming dividend payments after reported a better-than-expected first-half pretax profit.

Wetherspoon has been among the best performing pub companies throughout the recession as cut-price meals, such as ham, egg and chips for 2.99 pounds and a pint of Greene King IPA beer for 99 pence, proved attractive to cash-strapped consumers.

Chairman and founder Tim Martin told Reuters the refinancing will enable the company to press ahead with plans to increase new pub openings to a rate of 50 each year for the next 10 years.

"It gives a bit of extra scope if a few pubs come along. There are good sites becoming available. It's a question of doing the best ones and not buying things just because you've got money," Martin said in a telephone interview.

"The rent and freehold prices have come down from their peak by a considerable measure but the question is whether that's come down enough to give you decent returns."

"The company has been winning market share from competitors suffering in the depressed economy and is now preparing to take over more of their pubs," said KBC Peel Hunt's Paul Hickman.

"Wetherspoon has the will and now has the means for another major transformation on the scale of that it achieved in the 1990s."

FOCUS ON VALUE

The company's focus on value has helped it defy the malaise that has hit the rest of the sector as the impact of the recession, above-inflation beer duty hikes and competition from supermarkets combined have kept drinkers at home.