Soggy summer hits Punch Taverns

Drinkers have been kept out of beer gardens by the wet weather

Punch Taverns has warned that the wet summer and flooding this year will hit its profits.

Britain's biggest pub company predicts that the poor weather will knock 2-3% off its full year pre-tax profits, which will be announced on 8 November.

Punch has a strong presence in flood-hit areas such as the Midlands.

The better news for Punch is that it has seen "no significant impact" from the smoking ban that was introduced in England on 1 July this year.

"Disaggregating the smoking ban's impact from that of the summer's poor weather must be difficult and the ban will be tested more fully during the autumn and the winter," said Mark Brumby, an analyst from BlueOar.

"Clearly the wet summer derailed things a little but this is a relatively reassuring statement overall," he added.

Provisional data from the UK's Met Office indicates that this year's summer was the wettest since records began in 1914.