Shares surge as M&C hotel group sales show growth

SHARES in hotel group Millennium & Copthorne (M&C) surged 11 per cent yesterday 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 per cent over the quarter to 31 December, marking a significant improvement on previous months.

Shares closed up 41.2p at 417.7p as M&C confirmed easing conditions and reported an increase in Revpar for the first five weeks of 2010, ahead 3.5 per cent across the group.

Kwek Leng Beng, chairman of M&C, which has Scottish hotels in Aberdeen and Glasgow, said: "We were anticipating stronger demand towards the year end and the 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.

Yesterday's full-year figures showed that Revpar fell 16.3 per cent in 2009, while pre-tax profits fell 20 per cent to 81.9m, although this was better than analysts had been expecting.