It's squeaky bum time
Much as I'm loathe to quote my least favourite football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson's description of the closing weeks of a Premiership football season - "squeaky bum time" - could easily be applied to listed pub companies and brewers these days.
Life is tough and many in the Square Mile believe it will get tougher before it starts to get better. Shares in consumer-facing sectors are adopting the trajectory of a Stuka bomber in attack mode. Pubcos are being hit badly. But with creaking debt and flat sales to what extent are they a busted flush?
The scale of stock declines has varied. Where companies have had certain 'issues' over the last year - e.g. Regent Inns and Mitchells & Butlers - the year-on-year fall has been dramatic. So too Punch Taverns - the subject of City talk over its finances, firmly rebutted by the Burton-based group. Then there's the rest - Greene King, Marston's, Enterprise Inns, etc - sucked 'merely' into the tough trading vortex. Then there are smaller operators like Adnams and Heavitree telling it like it is. And let's face it, it's not pretty.
The new Parliamentary review of the pub industry will, meanwhile, do little to improve the blood pressure of investors and pubco chief executives alike.
Optimists and old hands say this is just a low point in the economic cycle. "We've been here before!" they cry - just as the demand for the services of insolvency practitioners grows.
True, the downturn won't take out everyone. Nor will it last forever. But what its impact in the short term will be remains to be seen. The official definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, and we haven't had one yet. However, I suspect most operators will find this scant comfort.
Prepare to hear a lot more bums squeaking in the months to come.
