Enterprise Inns trading in line after lifting H1 profit

(ShareCast News) - Enterprise Inns said second-half trading is in line with its expectations, despite being hurt by the timing of the Easter weekend and after improving its first-half pre-tax profit to £40m, from £10m.Its revenues improved marginally to £305m, from £302m.Enterprise Publican Partnerships' leased and tenanted like-for-like (LFL) net income rose 1.8% across the whole estate, from 0.6% a year earlier. Enterprise Commercial Properties' LFL net income gained 5.2%, from 5.0%."We remain confident that we will deliver positive like-for-like net income growth in our leased, tenanted and commercial estates for the full year," Enterprise said.The pub company had 75 managed pubs trading at 17 May, with 21 under its Bermondsey operation, 50 under its Craft Union operation and four within Enterprise Managed Investments"We have now partnered with three managed experts and have a strong pipeline of interest from other exceptional operators," Enterprise said.Looking ahead, it forecast trade to benefit from the UEFA Euro 2016 football championship in June and July, but it anticipated a period of disruption to follow the introduction of the Pubs Code."We are continuing to make good progress," said CEO Simon Townsend in a statement."Our leased and tenanted business is maintaining its growth momentum while the rapid expansion of our managed operations and commercial property portfolio is on track and delivering results in line with our expectations," he said."We are confident that the execution of our strategy is demonstrating a clear path to maximising long term shareholder value and our returns driven approach to allocating excess cash will deliver near term benefits to all our stakeholders."