Songbird Estates, which through its subsidiary Canary Wharf Group, owns much of the iconic office development in London's east end, has benefited from strong lease renewals in the first half of 2012.

Bank of New York Mellon extended terms on its 152,000 square feet site at One Canada Square while a further 20,000 square feet of leasings were completed between January and June.

The crucial net asset value per share figure increased by 4.7%, or 9p, to £1.99 between December and June.

Underlying profit before tax for the first half was £17.3m compared with £6.6m for the equivalent period in 2011. The increase of £10.7m was mainly attributable to an increase in net property income of £8.3m, combined with a reduction in administrative expenses of £2.5m.

The Loan to Value rate is now at 64.6%.

Songbird has also lowered the coupon on its preference shares and removed the option of early redemption, the effect being to "eliminate short term refinancing risks".


Helped by a summer of special events and the fact that it is going up against soft comparatives, pubs group JD Wetherspoon has made a flying start to its new financial year, but conceded it won't be able to keep up the record pace.

In the first six weeks of the financial year just ended, like-for-like (LFL) sales were up just 0.4% year-on-year, whereas this time round in the six weeks to 9th September 2012, like-for-like sales increased by a far more eye-catching 8.4%, with total sales increasing by 12.8%, helped by a strong performance during the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"Sales this summer have been enhanced by a number of one-off events and we do not expect to sustain this level of growth," cautioned Tim Martin, the founder and Chairman of Wetherspoon.

Looking back on the financial year to July 29th, 2012, comparisons are complicated by the fact that it is a 53-week year versus a 52-week period the year before, but that did not stop the group boasting of record sales, profit and earnings per share (EPS) before exceptional items.

Like-for-like bar sales increased by 2.8% (2011: +1.7%), LFL food sales increased by 4.8% (2011: +4.2%) and machine sales decreased by 2.8% (2011: -3.9%).

Full-year revenue was up 11.7% to £1,197.1m from £1,072.0m the year before. Sales would have been up 9.3% even without the extra week and were up 3.2% on a like-for-like basis.

Profit before tax and exceptional items rose 8.4% (+5.8% stripping out the extra week) to £72.4m from £66.8m in the previous year. Statutory profit before tax dipped 4.1% to £58.9m from £61.4m.

Exceptional items before tax totalled £13.5m, versus exceptional charges of £5.4m the year before. Most of the exceptional charges this time round were paper adjustments, with just £0.6m being a cash charge.

The exceptional items relate to the impairment of trading pub assets of £7.8m (2011: £4.4m), a provision for onerous leases of £2.2m, an information technology (IT) related asset write-off of £1.7m, a loss on the disposal of property, plant and equipment of £1.1m and restructuring costs of £0.6m.

Adjusted earnings per share rose 17.0% (52 weeks basis: +14.4%) to 41.3p from 35.3p a year earlier. The full-year dividend has been held at 12p, which means a final dividend for the period of 8p.

The market had pencilled in £1.23bn for sales and pre-tax profit of £71.2m. Earnings per share were tipped to advance to 41.6p while the dividend was seen climbing to 12.95p.

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