The Restaurant Group (TRG) has said today that it is continuing to see a deterioration in trading conditions in 2016 so far, which will lead to a fall in full-year sales of between 2.5% and 5.0%.
This would translate into a full-year pretax profit in the range of £74m to £80m, down from the £86.8m it made in financial 2015.
The downturn is being seen particularly in the leisure business which comprises the restaurants located at retail parks.
The company had expected a FY pretax profit of £89m. For the 17 weeks to April 24, total sales were up 4.7% and like-for-like sales were down 2.7%.
The restaurant operator, which runs the Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito and Garfunkel's chains, had been posting continuous profit growth for the last few years as it has been rapidly expanding its portfolio of sites.
But in January, it warned that a tough trading environment was leading to depressed like-for-like sales growth in 2016.
TRG said in a statement, 'Since we updated on current trading with the preliminary results on 9 March, we have seen a further deterioration in trading conditions, with our Leisure business, in particular, continuing to be impacted by the structural and business challenges referred to in the March Preliminary results statement.
'A comprehensive review of our current operating strategy has also commenced. This will include our property portfolio, site roll out programme, brand positioning and overheads. We will update on this review at the Interim results in August.'