By Neil Maidment
LONDON (Reuters) - Pubs group Mitchells & Butlers (L:MAB) on Tuesday said it had replaced its chief executive Alistair Darby with insider Phil Urban as it warned weak trading would push full-year profit to the bottom end of market forecasts.
The group, whose pubs include Harvester, Toby Carvery and All Bar One, said Urban, who joined M&B as Chief Operating Officer in January, would take control on Sept. 27 with Darby's three-year tenure ending the day before.
Shares in the firm opened down 3.7 percent.
Chairman Bob Ivell said the group's non-executive directors had considered the issue of leadership very carefully before appointing Urban, who has also worked at Scottish & Newcastle, Whitbread (LONDON:WTB) and Rank.
"The change would suggest the board (and the principal shareholders) are unhappy at the speed of change within the business as evidenced by the accompanying trading update," Cenkos analyst Simon French said.
Under Darby, who joined M&B after an 18 month search, the firm has tried to improve profits by refurbishing its estate, increasing marketing and targeting higher volumes of food sales with cheap deals, but its underlying performance has lagged some its rivals and margins have been squeezed.
The group, which operates around 1,700 pubs and restaurants, warned on profits on Tuesday after what it said had been a subdued casual dining market over the summer, made worse by wet weather.
For the first 50 weeks of the year total sales, which include new openings, were up 7 percent, but sales at pubs open for more than a year were up by just 1 percent, it said.
Prior to Tuesday's announcement analysts had forecast full-year pretax profit in a range of 179.40 million pounds to 203.90 million pounds, according to Reuters data, with a consensus of 189 million pounds.
That compared to 172 million pounds posted in 2014.
