Coca-Cola gave up selling Costa in February. Its cafés just turned a £20m profit.
Costa Ltd, the chain's main coffee-shop arm, made an operating profit of £20m in the year to 31 December 2025, according to accounts filed at Companies House and reported by The Guardian on Sunday.
It lost £13.5m in 2024 and £5.8m the year before. Revenue rose 5% to almost £1.3bn.
The Coca-Cola Company bought Costa Coffee from Whitbread for £3.9bn in 2018. In February it confirmed it had dropped plans to sell the chain after bids failed to meet its expectations, the paper reported.
The Guardian tied the turnaround to remodelled shops and a menu with iced drinks and matcha. Chief executive Philippe Schaillee: "The coffee shop is increasingly a destination for morning and afternoon." Costa opened a net 50 UK outlets last year and plans 50 more.
£20m on almost £1.3bn of revenue is an operating margin of about 1.5%. The profitable year ended in December 2025, two months before the sale was dropped. The accounts cover Costa Ltd, not the whole business Coca-Cola bought, so they do not establish the return on the £3.9bn.
What would you pay for a chain one year into a return to profit?
Image: AI-generated.
Sources
Every story here is open to read. The ERP LEADERS brief goes one step further.
The week in enterprise software, in one email: the stories that mattered, the failures with their figures, one case taken apart. Read a sample or sign up for the brief.
Welcome back. · Issue 01
