Enterprise Inns said on Tuesday that the majority of its sites were continuing to trade profitably even as the pub group confirmed plans to scrap its interim dividend following a 92 per cent fall in first-half pre-tax profit.

For the six months to the end of March, profit before tax tumbled from £122m to £9m, largely as a result of £94m of one-off costs related to writedowns in the value of its 7,616-strong pub estate and mark-to-market adjustments on its interest rate swaps.