The group, which has about 6,000 pubs across Britain and has been heavily focused on reducing debts of 2.7 billion pounds ($4 billion), said on Tuesday adjusted pretax profit for the six months to March 31 was 55 million pounds, down 14 percent on a year ago as expected.

Heavy snowfall across Britain in January, a cold Spring and a problem with its wine and spirits distributor saw like-for-like sales fall 4.2 percent in the period, a sharper decline than the 1.6 percent fall posted a year earlier.

Enterprise, which is investing in managers and pub improvements like free Wi-fi, is targeting underlying sales growth in the second half of the year and said like-for-like sales in the second half to date were down by around 1 percent, adjusting for the timing of Easter.

The group, whose shares are up 45 percent on a year ago to 99.85 pence, reiterated its target to reduce net debt to 2.5 billion pounds by the year end by using disposal proceeds.

(Reporting by Neil Maidment; editing by Rhys Jones)