The owner of Upper Crust and Caffè Ritazza slumped to a pre-tax loss of almost £300m in the six months to the end of March, as Covid restrictions kept customers away from its outlets in airports and railway stations. The company has reopened a further 250 units since the end of March, taking the total of trading outlets to 1,150, representing only 40% of its 2,800 branches worldwide. SSP intends to have reopened up to 1,500 outlets in the summer, as it anticipates a recovery in customer demand. Despite the London-listed company’s expectation that domestic and leisure travel will continue to recover during the rest of the year, it does not expect its like-for-like revenues to return to pre-Covid levels until 2024. In other parts of the world, new travel restrictions in countries including India and Thailand, which have been dealing with new waves of coronavirus infections, have affected SSP’s trading.

Source: The Guardian June 09, 2021 11:03 UTC