Bravo Inns, the owner of more than 40 wet-led, community-based pubs in the North West, has been acquired by NewRiver REIT for £17.9m.
The pubs will be transferred over to the Hawthorn Leisure estate, which was purchased by NewRiver for £106.8m in May 2018, bringing its total number of pubs to more than 700.
The sale price represents an EBITDA multiple of 6.8x, with the transaction expected to generate annualised outlet EBITDA of £2.6m, equating to a yield on cost of 14%. This excludes £300k of synergies expected to be realised through the transfer of Bravo Inns to the Hawthorn Leisure platform.
Mark Davies, CFF of NewRiver and CEO of Hawthorn Leisure, said, “The UK pub sector has experienced a recent revival in transaction activity and, as an early investor into community pubs, we have been tracking the success of Bravo Inns for some time.
'The transaction will increase our portfolio weighting in community pubs and demonstrates the value of our Hawthorn Leisure platform in identifying acquisitions that can deliver higher yielding sustainable cashflows with scale driven synergies.
'A further attraction of this acquisition is the quality of the pub estate and the pub partners. We look forward to welcoming Bravo Inns and its pub partners to Hawthorn Leisure.”
