Marston’s is now the highest-yielding pub operator on the stock market, although to be fair there is not a lot of competition, what with several of its rivals being precluded from paying a dividend at all because of heavy debt burdens.
The company is also approaching the end of a wide-ranging restructuring under which it has ditched hundreds of drinks-led boozers and focused instead on pubs selling food. In this Marston’s is merely going along with the rest of the sector, but the company is more interested in building new pubs, about 25 each year, rather than competing with rivals in auctions for existing stock.
This makes sense; in the financial year to the end of September, more than 200 pubs were sold, on an