Australians’ appetite for a pub feed or a slap on the pokies has not been dampened by rising interest rates or inflation, pushing up the profits of Australia’s biggest hotels and poker machines operator. But don’t expect its double-digit growth rate to continue.

Endeavour Group chief executive Steve Donohue said people have flocked back to bars and bistros after the pandemic. Massive sporting events, such as the FIFA Women’s World Cup, have been “changing pubs up” and helped boost sales at the company’s hotels by 31 per cent.

“Bars and food are really pumping along,” he said. “People are just loving the fact they can get back together in pubs.” But he warned the company’s hotels would “absolutely not” be able to replicate that rate of growth, which came in the recovery from COVID lockdowns.

“Remember, that 31 per cent is cycling over a period of time when pubs were closed, in large part,” he said.

Donohue made his comments after Endeavour, which also owns the Dan Murphy’s and BWS bottle shop chains, notched a 6.9 per cent uptick in net profit to $529 million, short of analyst expectations of $543 million. Group sales rose 2.5 per cent to $11.9 billion, while earnings before interest and tax jumped by 10.7 per cent to $1 billion.

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The company has declared a full-year dividend of 21.8¢, a 7.9 per cent increase on the year prior. Investors did not seem impressed with the numbers, sending its share price 4.2 per cent lower.

The $10.7 billion company’s hotels division was the main growth driver. Sales jumped 31 per cent to $2 billion and earnings rose 35.9 per cent to $428 million. Endeavour’s ALH Hotels business operates more than 350 venues.

Although it operates more than 12,500 poker machines across its 300 hotels, the company does not break down its earnings from gambling, rolling it instead into its hotels figures. Analysts estimate at least one-quarter of its overall revenue is generated by its gaming machines.