With the benefit of that most wonderful thing, hindsight, we may have missed a trick when we failed to take profits in Whitbread when the shares approached £37 earlier this year. The implied stock market value at that time of nearly £7bn did not look to be a million miles away from the replacement cost of its assets, to suggest the shares were looking fully valued. However, the combination of a pull back in the share price, last month’s perfectly solid full-year results and the launch of a new growth plan should justify patient support of the Premier Inn owner, especially as the combination of the forecast dividend payment and the new £150m share buyback equates to a total cash yield of more than 5.5pc. The UK hotel market’s post-pandemic recovery continues, and Premier Inn is well placed to capitalise, with 85,000 rooms and a 12pc market share in an industry where supply is still not back to pre-pandemic levels, thanks to a marked drop in the number of independent operators. Meanwhile, the nascent German operation offers additional upside. Revenue per room in Germany advanced smartly in the year to February, and Whitbread has outlined plans to rapidly grow the...