Suffolk brewer and pub retailer Greene King has accelerated its growth strategy with the £55.8 million acquisition of Cloverleaf Restaurants.

Chief executive Rooney Anand said that based on the 12 Cloverleaf sites that will be trading at the end of this financial year, this is equivalent to 8.7x annualised outlet EBITDA.

He said that over the last 18 months,the Bury St Edmunds company had been driving its retail expansion strategy by complementing a strong underlying trading performance with targeted retail acquisitions, “utilising our rights issue proceeds and accelerating our repositioning toward food-driven retail outlets.”

Anand added: “This is an exciting acquisition for Greene King as Cloverleaf operates large, freehold, quality pub restaurants, across the North of England and the Midlands and is well positioned to capitalise on the growing carvery market.

“It is growing strongly both organically, with LFL sales growing ahead of our existing Retail business, and through additional sites. There is a strong pipeline of new sites with a minimum of ten additional outlets expected to open within two years.

“The acquisition, combined with a planned investment of c.£25m in the first 10 pipeline sites, will utilise the remaining balance of our rights issue proceeds.”

Despite the big freeze that brought a chill to the tills in December, Greene King has issued an upbeat interim management statement for the 38 weeks to January 23.

It said all businesses continued to trade well with similar or slightly stronger growth trends than those reported at the interim results. Trading in the last eight weeks had been influenced by the poor weather in December, which negatively impacted trading ahead of Christmas, but January brought a positive impact due to improved conditions over last year.

Anand said that in its largest business, retail, Greene King had continued to deliver strong underlying growth.

Greene King Retail like-for-like (LFL) sales are now +3.9 per cent with Belhaven retail LFL sales at +3.6 per cent. Like-for-like sales at Hungry Horse, the largest retail brand, are +10.3 per cent.

The company’s repositioning towards food continues with Greene King Retail LFL food sales growth of +8.2 per cent, while the firm also continues to achieve LFL growth in both drinks and accommodation sales.

It expects margins for the full year in Greene King Retail to be slightly ahead of last year.

In the tenanted business, the focus on improving the retail offer across the Pub Partners estate, backed by investment in customer service through a mystery guest programme, and in estate quality via increased capital investment, continues to drive LFL profit growth. LFL EBITDA per pub is +0.6 per cent and average EBITDA per pub is +1.9 per cent.

Brewing Company own-brewed volume is -3.3 per cent against a UK ale market at -7.6 per cent. Greene King continues to focus investment on its industry-leading core brand portfolio, Greene King IPA, the UK's no.1 cask ale, Old Speckled Hen, the UK's no.1 premium ale and Abbot Ale, the UK's no.2 premium cask ale. Volume for these core brands is -1.0 per cent.

Anand reported that the integration of Belhaven into Greene King was on track, while cash generation and the balance sheet position remained healthy and in line with the company’s expectations.

Looking ahead, anand said: “We are confident that we will continue to deliver profitable growth over the rest of the financial year.

“We are successfully pursuing our strategy for growth via retail expansion, brand investment and our focus on value, service and quality, which is delivering sector outperformance in all of our businesses.

“While the short-term outlook for the UK consumer is unclear, we are confident we will continue to deliver a sector leading performance and meet our expectations for the financial year.”

The share price was slightly up when the markets opened.