Smoking ban causes brewers’ droop

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a pub. The Englishman turns to the others and says, ‘What’s that awful smell?’ ‘Och,’ says the Scotsman, ‘it takes a wee while to get used to.’ ‘Ah, so it does,’ says the Irishman, ‘’tis what pubs really smell like when you get rid of the smoke.’ Apologies for the Bernard Manning-style gag, but it illustrates the smoking ban’s unfortunate consequences: as the Scots and Irish will attest, pubs now give off a noxious aroma of stale beer, missed urinals, damp dogs and damp old men and the flatulence of both — plus the industrial-strength air freshener that fails to disguise it all. In fact, had Bernard lived to smell it, he’d find his Embassy Club in Manchester has an even worse whiff now that punters can’t smoke Embassy No. 1s there. And the ban is also causing a stink in City wine bars — not simply because share analysts can’t light up fat cigars over their glasses of port. As the smoke clears, it’s apparent that the share prices of certain companies are being stubbed out too.

Pub operators are the first obvious butt of the ban: Nielsen, the market researcher, reckons it will reduce beer sales in England and Wales by 200 million pints a year. JD Wetherspoon — the cheap-beer pub chain that pre-empted the 1 July smoking ban — issued a profit warning in May, admitting that full-year earnings would come in below analysts’ expectations, and sending its shares down 6 per cent. A few weeks later, Pubs ’n’ Bars said it had to increase spending on outdoor shelters for smokers, leading broker Daniel Stewart to cut its profits forecast, and the market to cut its share price by 4 per cent. So no surprise that analysts at Bridgewell put an ‘underweight’ recommendation on the entire listed pub sector last month.