Harrison ends Whitbread tenure on a high

But finance director Nicholas Cadbury said a pledge to invest £700m showed the business would not be shifting into defensive mode just because of change at the top. Roughly £100m will go towards opening 220 Costa Coffee stores (net of closures), and the remainder will be put into Premier Inn and the restaurant business. With roughly 5,500 new hotel rooms due to be added to the chain's UK estate this year, the aim of reaching 75,000 by 2018 - from 59,957 now - looks achievable. Mr Cadbury said the group had "no significant competitors" to its UK hotel business, given that the independent sector was "declining by 1-2 per cent per year" and other branded rivals were expanding far more slowly.

The company also grasped the nettle of the national living wage by increasing its Costa Coffee barista pay by roughly 10 per cent, which it said was "well ahead" of the levels set to kick in next April. The new pay legislation will cost roughly £15m-£20m per year in the next five years, but investing £12m in training and seeking efficiencies should help mitigate the cost. Mr Cadbury also acknowledged he could "never say never" on price rises.

Mr Cadbury added that the business remained on track to hit full-year expectations. This is in spite of £25m in exceptional items, primarily for "onerous leases on historically disposed businesses" and the scrapping of £10.1m of IT systems with "no future economic benefit".

Analysts at Numis expect pre-tax profits of £550m in the year to February 2016, leading to EPS of 234.8p, up from £488.1m and 213.7p in FY2015.