Whitbread PLC

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Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q3

[Operator]

Alison, you're live at the call now. Please, you can start your presentation.

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for dialing in for Whitbread's third quarter trading update. I'm joined here this morning by our Group Finance Director, Nicholas Cadbury. I'm going to start by giving you a brief view of the results, and then we'll turn over to Q&A at the end of that. So starting with the performance. We performed well in the third quarter. Total sales growth of 1%, which improved our year-to-date run rate. Our strong efficiency program continues to offset much of the high industry cost inflation, and we expect to deliver full year results in line with expectations. However, we do remain cautious on the U.K. business environment and the impact that, that has on hotel demand. During the third quarter, Premier Inn's U.K. sales grew 0.3% driven by strong food and beverage performance. Our total accommodation sales declined slightly by 0.4% as we saw the continuation of soft business demand in the region where most of our hotels are located. Total midscale and economy market sales were broadly flat at 0.2% across the U.K., but negative 1% in the region, reflecting the impact political and economic uncertainty is having on the domestic travel industry. This has led to a decline in short lead bookings for business customers which contribute significantly to revenue. On the other hand, in London, the market is driven to a greater extent by international customers, which Premier Inn has less exposure to as most of our customers are domestic. But despite that, Premier Inn did outperform the market in the third quarter, growing our total sales in London by 4.8%, ahead of the midscale and the economy market of 3.7%. And that was driven by strong maturity of our new capacity as well as good performance from our existing estate. Whilst Premier Inn's superior margin structure makes us more resilient to the impacts of lower demand than most of our peers, we expect subdued trends to continue into next year. However, the U.K. hotel market continues to present an attractive medium- to long-term opportunity. We see opportunity in 2 areas: firstly, we continue to win market share from the independent market by delivering high-quality capacity at great value for money; but secondly, we also have the opportunity to optimize our large portfolio of hotels. Therefore, despite the subdued short-term environment, we are continuing to invest in growth, in optimization of our hotel estate and in the development of our market-leading proposition. For example, we've now extended our Premier Plus room trial to 19 sites, and we continue to see excellent results from that. Our food and beverage sales had a stronger third quarter with total sales growing by 1.9%, contributing to the 0.3% total sales growth we achieved for the U.K. business. This better performance was achieved through a combination of new capacity and the introduction of attractive customer offers.Turning to Germany. In Germany, we're increasingly optimistic and firmly on plan. Our hotel in Frankfurt continues to trade well and achieve high customer scores. Since the start of the year, we also did more hotels, one in Hamburg and one in Munich, and they're maturing well and receiving excellent initial customer feedback. Our success to date in Germany is especially pleasing because we've achieved it with 100% direct bookings across all 3 of the open Premier Inn hotels.Our total committed pipeline in Germany is now about 8,500 rooms, and we're continuing to look for opportunities to accelerate and extend our pipeline further. We're proactively looking for more freehold and leasehold sites for organic expansion, along with further bolt-on acquisitions with significant investment made in our property team in Germany to facilitate that. As we have been investing ahead of revenue generation across aspects such as marketing, set-up costs and team costs, we continue to expect losses around GBP 12 million in this financial year. For the next 12 months, we'll be transformational for our business in Germany. We'll have, by the end of the year, 20 hotels open and trading in 15 top cities. Most of the German room additions are part of the Foremost acquisition which are due to be acquired at the end of February. Those hotels require a period of closure to be refurbished and rebranded into Premier Inn hotels, and that will take place during the spring and summer. This year, we also completed the acquisition of AcomHotel, which was 2 trading hotels and 1 pipeline hotel. And those 2 trading hotels will also be converted to Premier Inn later in 2020. In total this year, Premier will open around 3,000 rooms in the U.K. and over 2,000 in Germany with our committed pipeline now standing at over 20,000 rooms across both countries. Our efficiency program and investment in strong capabilities across technology, procurement, property and supply chain is ensuring we can deliver our growth plans efficiently and help us to partly offset persistently high inflation in our industry. We expect inflation this year to be around GBP 70 million and the benefits of our efficiency program to contribute GBP 40 million to GBP 50 million.In addition, we're maintaining our investment in the U.K. growth and increasing our investment in Germany to take advantage of the long-term opportunities that they present. Although we do remain cautious on the macroeconomic environment and the continued high inflation in the U.K., we're still excited by the long-term structural growth opportunities, and we're confident in our ability to access those opportunities. Given that it's difficult to predict business confidence in the short term, we are using planning assumptions for the next financial year, but are cautious and prudent to take into account that uncertain economic and political landscape. And that could, of course, lead to potential sustained weak hotel demand. To give you an idea of the sensitivity, every 1% movement in RevPAR impacts our profit by GBP 12 million to GBP 15 million.We expect a net margin headwind of about GBP 60 million next year, comprising about GBP 75 million of inflation and stranded costs and about GBP 25 million for investments in further improvements in our market-leading proposition. And that will be partially offset by efficiency savings of around GBP 40 million. Growth capacity additions will be around 4,500 rooms across the U.K. and Germany. And Germany losses will improve but stands at around GBP 10 million as we accelerate our pipeline and open the newly acquired hotels. Despite the continuation of short-term headwinds, our unique model and leading market position in the U.K. puts us in a strong position to continue to grow and to optimize in the U.K. and grow internationally. The opportunities for growth, along with our disciplined approach to capital allocation, means that we will continue to create long-term value for shareholders. Thank you for listening. Nicholas and I will now be pleased to answer any questions. And I will hand back to Tysa such that we can get the questions moving. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Vicki Stern from Barclays.

[Victoria Jane Lee Stern, MD & Equity Analyst]

Just firstly on the GBP 25 million being allocated to the ongoing cost items, could you just flesh that out a little bit on sort of what specifically that's going on? And I suppose and importantly, what kind of return you'd be expecting on that in terms of RevPAR or anything else and the phasing of it?In terms of the sort of cost savings piece, obviously you're allocating GBP 40 million for next year. How are you thinking about that? Would there be scope to do any more than that?And then just on the underperformance on RevPAR, on the gross RevPAR, that seemed to narrow a bit in Q3 versus your like-for-like RevPAR. Just what sort of drove that slightly better performance? And what are your expectations in terms of that RevPAR versus the market as we look out for the next few quarters?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Okay. If we take -- if I take the last one first, and then I'll let Nicholas to deal with the cost question. It's just a bit too early to tell in quarter 4 at this stage because, as you know, although it seems like we're well into the quarter, actually, the Christmas and New Year trading period and the return-to-work period get impacted a lot by the timing. And so you'll get some very, very strong weeks and then some very weak weeks depending on the timing in that period. So actually, it makes it quite hard to read. We did see an improvement, you're right, in quarter 3 and early in quarter 4. We're not calling that trend because it's just too early and we're just keeping an eye -- hawk-like eye on what we see in terms of business confidence and business investment to see whether we can get more confident about the business side of demand, particularly regionally recovering because as you see from the markets that London has been pretty buoyant, and we've outperformed in London. And regions have been -- have had a more measurable and subdued time. And our bigger estate in the regional area means that, that business trade is particularly important to us. So we're not really calling where we think that's going to go, but we are watching things like the business confidence and business investment indicators, which are quite correlated to how that short-term booking segment goes.Nicholas, do you want to...

[Victoria Jane Lee Stern, MD & Equity Analyst]

Just coming in on that, it was more about the underperformance versus the market. So just in terms of your performance versus whatever the industry is looking like on net yield management, less extension, that kind of thing?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Yes. We -- again, we focus very hard on narrowing the gap. And in London, we're not -- that we've then outperformed it. In the regions, we've narrowed the gap. We took actions last year across a range of activity on pricing and distribution. We've also started, as we say, investing in the product and investing in the Premier Plus rooms. And we would hope to see the results of that continue as we go through the year.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

So the first question you asked was about the kind of additional GBP 25 million worth of cost investments that we'll make this year. And it's really focused, as we say, on the kind of growth and kind of how we optimize and to kind of really improving our product proposition and driving that top line, particularly in the business-to-business sector. Actually, this year, if you look back, we've had a -- we've actually performed pretty well in the consumer sector and our weekend Premier have been busy. But you know that there's been headwinds in the business-to-business sector. And we want to make sure that if those headwinds continue, we're making the most that we possibly can. So that's where it's focused. I won't give you the granularity, but I'll give you kind of some of the kind of areas we were looking to invest in. Firstly, as you know, we've had -- we've trialed 19 of our sites, the Premier Inn Plus rooms, which its early reading for those have been very encouraging, and we will continue to roll those out through the year. So we'll have probably have here around about 2,000 of those rooms next year. And around those, again, we will upgrade the rooms in those hotels at the same time as well. We'll also look to kind of really target how we're targeting our business-to-business customers. As you know, we've got very high percentage of our customers coming direct to us at kind of 97%, 98%. But actually, it won't -- also, although you might think that that's full, we want to make sure that we're getting even more demand coming into our direct channels, particularly in that kind of small, medium and enterprise business-to-business customer as well. So we'll be increasing the level of kind of marketing and advertising we're doing there. We're also looking at investing in our people as well. As we see a tightening of the labor pool, looking at making sure that we are paying to make sure we retain the best people in the industry to continue to give really good service to our customers. So that's the kind of flavor of where we're putting the money.And the last question, sorry, the last question -- second question was on efficiencies, which we'll get GBP 40 million. I know we've had a really good track record with this over the last 3 years since we began this program. And I guess, the bigger you get, the more areas you find of where the efficiencies to come forth. Probably the biggest area this year is procurement actually.Looking at the way we do acquire, we've actually -- in the last 6 months, we've set up our office in China where we are able to buy direct from manufacturers, doing consolidation to consolidate the German and U.K. orders together. We're looking at which -- for example, we've just done a laundry contract, which has kind of improved the efficiency of delivery. We're looking at our kind of delivery distribution contracts as well. So they're the kind of key areas. We continue to look for efficiency to automating processes in the hotels as well, so just put systems into our hotels, which enable us to take a lot of the admin out of hotels as well. So they're the kind of areas we're looking at, but it's an ongoing process.

[Operator]

We have a question from Tim Barrett from Numis.

[Timothy William Barrett, Leisure Analyst]

Two things, if possible. One was just following up on that previous question about the fourth quarter and for your forward-looking comments. Is there anything you can say on how the consumer book is building? And I know you have -- are waiting for last-minute bookings, but anything you can say on forward bookings? And then secondly, around the efficiency program, are you still framing that in terms of the GBP 120 million 3-year plan? And I think there will be GBP 80 million left. Is there any way you're looking to accelerate that as we go through 2021?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Yes. Thanks, Tim. As previously that we had during last year, leisure -- the leisure sector is buoyant and strong, and our forward book position looks good. That was true through last year, even through the uncertain periods and the political upheaval we had last year, and it remains true now. So that base -- leisure base is strong and the forward booking position is good. That doesn't, because of the short-lead bookings, always translate into the final outcome in any given week of trading. But it is a good indicator that what we haven't seen is any dip in the core of the leisure customer.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

And in terms of your second bit about efficiencies, we think -- just in terms of can we accelerate, the GBP 40 million is part of the GBP 120 million. You're right on that. We're always looking to find ways to accelerate. Actually, it is -- get harder. We've been doing this program for 3 years, so you're -- you've done some of the easy low-hanging fruits. You have simply more harder stuff now. So I think the ability to accelerate is difficult. So I would strongly advise you to use the numbers we've given you than rather be more ambitious on that.

[Timothy William Barrett, Leisure Analyst]

Okay. And just to actually to round off on costs. I think there's a small uplift from this year to next year, about GBP 5 million. Is that simply the living wage being a bit more aggressive than you thought?

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

You've got -- just in terms of inflation of the business, you've got living wage which came out in December, which was higher than the staff has anticipated. Actually, it's a number of issues as well. You've seen -- if you look in the food markets at the moment, you've got kind of meat prices, just prices being -- I'm kind of vegan in January...

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

It's pork particularly.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Meat prices are moving up quite significantly in the market as well, and you've also got utility prices continuing to go. We probably got a little bit. Now we're kind of getting -- we've almost completed the end of the Costa separation as well. We've got a much better understanding of what the stranded costs are as well, and that's where you see a little bit more stranded costs coming through than we probably anticipated.

[Operator]

We have a question from Richard Clarke from Bernstein.

[Richard J. Clarke, Research Analyst]

A couple of questions for me. Just one is on what are you seeing in terms of capacity growth from the competitor set in the U.K.? Because then there was an article about record insolvencies, but also there's been stories about very high hotel growth in some of the regional cities, Glasgow, Plymouth, et cetera. So what are you seeing overall in terms of market capacity growth? And then the second one, just regarding Germany, you said you're on track. I may be being a bit pedantic. But again, going back to your sort of initial slides on Germany, and it said you should have had 6 to 8 organically opened hotels by now. And at 8 hotels, you'd be breakeven. It seems like you're a bit behind that in terms of organic development, and you're not going to be breakeven even with a lot more than 8 hotels. So what is the sort of pathway to breakeven? And how are you feeling about organic development in Germany to date?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Yes. The -- I think the original proposal by the end of 2020, by the end of the financial year 2020, was 6 to 8 hotels. And from our perspective, we will have 20, maybe more, but 20 open -- 20, for sure, open hotels. So we're not uncomfortable with where we are. We'll also -- well, by now, actually, by today, we have a pipeline of 48 across the piece. So all of our pipeline, about 22 hotels were by the acquisition route and the remainder were by the organic route. So actually, we're not uncomfortable with it. I guess the only real difference from -- and we are going back 4 years. So these differences sort of got ironed out over the last 2 or 3 years in presentations we've given. But originally, I think we would have anticipated the 6 or 7 hotels opened by this year to have been freehold. And part of that was a risk strategy to avoid being in a position where if we thought Germany didn't work because we haven't got a single hotel to base that on, that we would be able to exit and freehold would allow us that exit. We agreed 2 or 3 years ago that, that strategy wouldn't work in Germany. But the way that the property market in the large cities is working is that a long leasehold in a high-quality site in a large German city was going to be as good as freehold from a risk management perspective. And therefore, we have a higher level of leasehold in Germany because that what's been available for us to get organically. So I think that's really the difference. So we're pretty pleased with the way that we've got both organic and inorganic. And we have quite a large now property team, property development team in the regions in Germany working on the acquisition of new sites. By no means, this isn't easy setup in Germany because the German property market is extremely difficult. The negative yields in Germany means that it is -- there is a lot of demand for German property and a lot of demand in residential as well as in hotel business. So we do compete hard for the sites, and we do maintain quite firm discipline on hurdle rates.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

And the difference for next year is really about the acquisition versus our [ ratio ]. We didn't anticipate for years doing an acquisition this year -- this next year that had opened. And just in terms of when we look to back and looked at -- that we just got access to the properties. And actually, what's changed from previous last year is actually looking at what's the best way, the most cost-efficient way of refurbishing those hotels. And it's actually to do it by keeping them closed a bit longer and take a bit of a slower refurbishment, which is kind of a headwind for us.

[Richard J. Clarke, Research Analyst]

And what are you seeing on capacity growth in the U.K.?

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

On capacity growth in the U.K., yes. So if you look at -- capacity actually kind of peaked in kind of 2000 -- the competition in 2018 was strong. As you know, capacity is often kind of anti-cyclical in the good times. They put -- you put the spades in the ground and then they open 2 years later when it's a bit more challenging. So we saw 2018 is where it picked up. Actually, 2019 has been a strong year for capacity going as well, but actually less. You did start to see it actually just tailing off a little bit in our major competition overall. So we'll see what 2020 is, but we'd imagine it to kind of just start to soften slightly.

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

And from a budget-branded perspective, specifically budget-branded perspective, the main increases have been Travelodge and Holiday Inn Express. But there's then been a smattering of a very large number of different new brands, largely in the larger metropolitan and urban areas rather than the smaller rural or regional areas.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes. You continue to see quite a lot of 5-stars opening in London there as well.

[Operator]

We have a question from Lena Thakkar from Panmure Gordon.

[Lena Thakkar, Analyst]

My first question, Alison, you mentioned that Premier Inn has been outperforming in London. I'm just trying to figure out which metrics you're referring to when you say that?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

If you are looking at our trading statement, they're in the metrics that's at the back. But we had total sales growth of 4.8% versus the market at 3.7%.

[Lena Thakkar, Analyst]

Okay. But how about on the sort of like-for-like RevPAR and total REVPAR? It looks like you're underperforming the STR data, which is RevPAR as well. So are you saying that it's the F&B part which is outperforming as opposed to the actual RevPAR?

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

The numbers had some [ equating ] there with just accommodation...

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Just accommodation sales. The 4.8% and 3.7% are just -- and as you know, we always focus on total because we increase our capacity. So we look at the total business that we're running versus everybody else's. So how many rooms are we selling? Can we mature our new capacity? Can we get occupancy and rate to the right levels in the shortest possible time? And the only way of viewing that is on a total accommodation basis. So that's what we quote. It's what we look at in the business.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes. And if you look in London, if you look at the midscale economy, RevPAR, it was up 2%. Actually, our like-for-like sales were up 2.6%.

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Yes. And there's another stat, but they're all laid out on the back of the -- in the appendix to the trading statement. Sometimes people don't have all of the data on the total market, midscale market split, so we've included those at the back.

[Lena Thakkar, Analyst]

Okay. Great. And then just in terms of the target, for this year's target of 2,500, I'm just trying -- and that's in the U.K. net new rooms. I'm just trying to work out where that started. Was that -- I think earlier in the year, perhaps around Q1, you referred to 3,000 to 3,500. Was that at that time meant to be a gross number or a net number?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

We only ever have historically talked about gross numbers. And it's only since we started to talk to you this year about the fact that we were looking at Perfect portfolios in catchment. We, therefore, are going to consider churning some of our smaller hotels, extending some of our larger ones, moving some hotels, extending leases on others and optimizing in a catchment that we started to talk about the net because, historically, we have not closed hotels. This year, we are closing 9 hotels, 5 of which were franchises and 1 of which -- actually, we had a fire, and so we lost the hotel in a fire. And we therefore -- and we have 3 sales of hotels, which is the start of the work that we're doing on the Perfect portfolio in those locations. We would plan that our optimization will take place over a number of years. And so we will start talking about both net and gross to give you both numbers. But historically, up until now, we've only ever given gross numbers.

[Lena Thakkar, Analyst]

Okay. Great. So the 3,000 target for next year in the U.K., I think that's a gross number according to your statement.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

That's a gross number, yes.

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Yes.

[Lena Thakkar, Analyst]

So what would the net number be for next year that we should think about?

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

We haven't said because as you work through the year, we'll work that. But you'll see probably the same level of closures that we had this year as we churn that bottom end of the sale. But that's something we'll continue to update you on as we go through the year.

[Lena Thakkar, Analyst]

Okay. And sorry, if I could just add one last one on to that. How many years of sort of churn would you expect?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Well, to get -- I mean the perfect -- we've done the work to know what our Perfect portfolio looks like. You just can't achieve it all in one go. You can't just sort of snap your fingers and do it. If you're looking at -- the example we've always used is Preston. I think we've had it in previous presentations. We'll try -- in the year-end presentation, we'll try not use Preston. We'll use somebody -- some another location to give you another example of it. But in there, we know exactly where we would like to place the hotels. In order to close one of our hotels, we will need to extend another close by because the key for us is to not lose the total. It's not about total room stock and it's certainly not about losing customers. So allowing customers to transfer their business and to close what typically are older, in need of refurbishment and very small hotels, which given the inflation in the industry become less economically viable as time goes by. If you think about a 40-bedroom hotel versus a 100-bedroom hotel, they've got the same sort of management staff and the same minimum staffing levels, but over a much lower revenue. So that's Perfect portfolio and optimization work. And therefore, the churn and the growth and the extensions and the closures will all take place probably over a 5- to 7-year period. And we'll do some each year, yes. So we'll probably talk a little bit more about that at the year-end results.

[Operator]

We have a question from Jaafar Mestari from Exane BNP Paribas.

[Jaafar Mestari, Analyst]

I've got 2, if that's okay. So firstly, on Premier Plus. If I heard correctly, 200 rooms next year on your portfolio of almost 80,000. I'm not sure we should...

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

That's thousand. 2,000 rooms.

[Jaafar Mestari, Analyst]

Oh, all right. Excellent. Is this enough to help RevPAR materially? Or is there a stage where you don't call it a trial anymore and Plus becomes much more material? That's the first question.

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Okay. That's question one, yes.

[Jaafar Mestari, Analyst]

And a second question maybe. Just on distribution, you mentioned that in a tougher environment, it's even more important to focus on direct to maximize your net RevPAR. Just playing devil's advocate, at what stage do you actually go the other way and start saying, let's allocate more rooms to third parties and OTAs to fill those rooms, secure a critical level of occupancy, maybe even help push prices a little bit?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Well, we probably have, to be clear, critical levels of occupancy. We're nearly 80% occupancy, so we're not worried about being able to use direct. The standard OTA, we have reduced again our reliance on in the last quarter. So we now have -- we have reduced again our inventory with our OTAs in order to be even more direct. And I know, for lots of reasons, people found this counterintuitive. But a lot of what an OTA will put into our business will be in a hotel which is already full. An OTA would love to have County Hall or Covent Garden in London. We have almost 100% occupancy in those hotels by direct bookings. And if we give them to an OTA, we just have to pay commission on the bookings in a hotel which already would be full. So you have to remember, they're not -- they aren't born equal, the OTAs in terms of the distribution and the small rural hotel that we might be struggling to fill isn't one that's going to be necessarily filled through the OTA route. That said, we are interested. So if you think -- rather than online travel agent, you think distribution reach. We are absolutely prepared to extend our distribution reach for corporates into channels we haven't historically paid or played in, which are about bookings where a business consumer has to go through their travel -- their business travel agent. And so we are looking at how we would use those distributors more than we have historically, but not a generic online travel agent play. The reason we're interested in that is those are bookings we could not get any other way because that business travel isn't allowed to book direct. They have to use those channels. So that is a new market opportunity for us, and we will look at that and are indeed working on it. On the first question you asked about Premier Plus rooms. We opened the first 2 floors of rooms in 2 hotels last year, which were incredibly positive in the trial. So much so across every day of the week, across all guests, across repeat bookings, not just customer research, but also the actual buying behavior and the sales uplift and returns profile which we got, that we rolled that out to another 500 rooms. There are almost 500 rooms we now have in what we call the trial. Though for some of those hotels, it's very early days because they've only been opened a few weeks. For others, they've been opened more like a couple of months. And certainly, by the year-end, we will have hit the 500 mark on those.And what I can say is that the results -- and they're across, sorry, they are across a much more -- much wider group of sites, both size and type of site and also location, not just metropolitan, but much more secondary locations as well. And what I can say is at present, the results of that trial are very, very positive. That is giving us the confidence to turn the plan into 2,000 rooms for next year. And with 80,000 rooms in the estate, you are right, there is a significant runway of opportunity if those rooms continue to perform. To give you a sense of that, they generally have a sales uplift of GBP 10 to GBP 20. Our originals were GBP 20 because that was in London. In our secondary locations, they may be somewhere between GBP 10 and GBP 20. And they have -- we put them on separate floors. But it is an upgrade in the room, so it's not upgrading the rest of the hotel necessarily. It's equally appealing to business and leisure guests, slightly counterintuitively, but it is. And the return rates of guests as well as the guest experience scores are very high. And they're generally the rooms that are getting booked first. So the run rate of sales early on is very strong, which gives us a lot of confidence people are choosing the upgrade. So overall, we're pleased with the sites we've done for so far. And that means we will start rolling out, and the first 2,000 rooms will be next year. Well, we will be at 2,000. It's an extra 1,500 next year. We'll be at 2,000 by the end of the year. Hopefully, that will help you think about -- yes, that will help you think about that.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from Julian Easthope from RBC.

[Julian Kenneth Easthope, MD & Analyst]

Just a couple, if I may. First one, just a bit of clarification in terms of the net cost number of GBP 60 million. Is that a like-for-like figure? Or does that cost includes the incremental number of rooms coming in, the cost of the new room supply? I mean, effectively, what I'm trying to find out is, in order to break even in the U.K. with similar profits year-on-year in the U.K., are you looking at sort of 4% to 5% RevPAR increase for 2021 for it to be a similar number to last year? And second question, similarly on cost. The minimum wage is going to go up to GBP 10.50. Do we know -- which is 5% CAGR for the following years. Should we, therefore, assume GBP 60 million to GBP 70 million of incremental costs for the following 4 years gross, less your, obviously, your program that you've got to reduce cost? But is that a sort of good starting point as to what your long-term planning looks like?

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Okay. I'll let Nicholas pick up the detail.

[Nicholas Theodore Cadbury, Group Finance Director & Executive Director]

Yes. So just -- so the GBP 60 million is a net cost we're looking at overall. So it's not just like-for-like. It covers everything. So that's all of our growth and all of our optimization going into that overall. In terms of National Living Wage, yes, you're right, we're expecting it to go at GBP 50 million a year. I mean I think it's quite unusual to give guidance in '21 in Q3 actually. So giving guidance for the year after, I'm quite hesitant to do, particularly as things like National Living Wage came out of December at a different rate than what we were expecting it to do. I mean I think directionally, what we expect now looking forward, and we will continue to update you, is we've set the cost efficiency break about GBP 120 million for -- over 3 years. So you'd expect the similar sort of level for the year after. In terms of the inflation figure, the inflation figure of GBP 75 million is high at the moment, one, because of -- you've got the kind of increase in stranded costs. Those stranded costs stay in, but you wouldn't expect to step up. But you're also right now seeing quite high food inflation and utility inflation. I'd expect utility inflation to go forward. I don't know about food inflation that far out. But you would hope that the GBP 75 million inflation does moderate somewhat going forward, but we'll have to keep you updated on that.

[Alison Brittain, Chief Executive & Director]

Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for dialing in this morning. We'll pick up any other issues outside of the call. Thank you very much. Have a good day.