Pubs thrive while music bars dive

PUB giant Enterprise Inns set the party pace over Christmas and New Year while Britain's biggest music venue and nightclub operator Luminar lagged to top off a miserable 2004.

Luminar reported a 4.6% sales slide at music bars like Chicago Rock and Jumpin Jaks. Although sales jumped 11.9% at nightclubs like Lava Ignite and Liquid, the group also saw revenues falling by around 7% at its unbranded venues. Overall, like-for-like sales in the five weeks to 2 January were down 3.9%.

Meanwhile, Britain's biggest pub operator, Enterprise Inns, reported strong Christmas and New Year trading. 'Our business has continued to perform strongly in the first quarter, and over the Christmas and New Year period, with both earnings and cash generation in line with our expectations,' group Chairman Hubert Reid said in a trading statement ahead of Thursday's annual shareholder meeting.

The group, which runs nearly 9,000 tenanted pubs throughout the UK, said the performance of its recently acquired Unique business would allow it to repay £170m ($319.6m) of bank debt through a bond issue in February. The company reported a 33% rise in pretax profits last November for the year to end-September 2004.

Shares in Enterprise, which have outperformed the leisure sector by 11% in the last year, closed at 760½p on Wednesday, valuing the group at around £2.7bn, but fell 5p to 755½p as trading opened today.

Meanwhile, Luminar's shares have underperformed the leisure sector by about 6% over the last year, as its venues have suffered from slowing consumer spending, local crackdowns on binge-drinking and increased competition as more and more similar bars open up.

They closed at 558p on Wednesday, valuing the group at around £407m ($765.2m), but took a hit of 21p to 537p on the open this morning.