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My Godfather is I regret no longer with us, he was a Captain in the Army before serving and creating Marstons from a previous Company. However what I have said is the truth in that he was a very upright and straight individual and held the Marstons Board in great esteem. They are a very professional group of individuals. I only quote facts today that I obtain from official sources. You may wish to visit the Marstons web site sometime. However I would very much like to see the sales pick up released from Marstons as I am sure most will be surprised. Lets wait and see but I see tremendous upside here.
Supercharger
I do indeed consult the Marstons website which says, amongst many other things, that they "own around 1400 pubs".
You, I recall, have mentioned the number of 2000 at least twice.
Where are the other 600 please?
Also has the website been updated since they sold a bunch of them at a loss late last year ?
This board really should be about facts, don't you agree?
I run one of those pubs that was sold last year!
The number of pubs they own will be broken down into ‘leased and tenanted’ and ‘managed houses’ and possibly ‘partnership agreements’
There are more aspects to the pub estate than the general public are aware of,
I don’t know the breakdown off the top of my head but the information is out there:
Marstons sold 140(ish) pubs to Admiral Taverns last November and then sold a further amount of pubs to another company between December and January, these were A selection of the lower performing pubs and ones that only generated ‘wet’ income for the brand, - the money forum the sale was intended to be spent of paying off 200,000,000 of their (at the time) £1.8 billion debt.
All of this is public, and available on various press releases from between November and today
@Daave
I did get the 1400 number from their website & they sort of break that up by saying they have 500 local pubs, 200 pubs with food, and "about 400 pubs in our tenanted estate"
So I guess that is about as close as we can get to precise numbers, they have Pitcher/Piano's , not many 18, and a few Revere hotel/pubs. The website is not updated massively regularly so it is not impossible that the 137 which went to Admiral for £44.9mill are still included in that 1400 figure, but whether or not they are we have to be about as right as we can be with the numbers off their site.
I don’t think the 137 and the ones sold to new river/Hawthorne are in the 1400 I’m fairly sure it was closer to 1600 when I saw the company details when I signed contracts etc.
Either way, they own a substantial amount of pubs split across varied ‘sectors’ of the pub sector, various revenue streams,
The pubs they sold were nearly all sites where the venues had struggled to keep the businesses viable, either due to location, the availability of customers or the tenants abilities to maximise the business,
Problem sites that needed more attention to get them up to par than would ever be worth investing from their business model
Apparently, selling off these pubs increased the profitability of their entire estate by 2% Which doesn’t I totally seem much but when you take a step back it’s a pretty big deal.
I just saw the mention of 2000 pubs, before the 137 deal last year, they sold a fair chunk before this (to Heineken I think) a year or two ago.. ‘2000 pubs’ sounds like the number from before that sale.. 1400 sounds right at the minute!
If I remember right, they sold some buildings at some point m on the basis that they would rent them back.. I’m not 100% if this was many pubs or just a select few.
For sure Marstons Pub Estate will be made up of differing tenures, leased,tenanted, manged houses and no doubt any number of hybrid agreements.
What is certain whatever other experts say we do not have 2000.
Daave it is good to get your input. Are you a manager or tenant?
How is the change of ownership working for you and customers? Better or worse than previous?
Daave, it is indeed really good to get your input, especially as you are "at the coalface" and not a saloon bar commentator, you see exactly what is/has been going on.
You caught me there with the New River Reit/Hawthorn deal, I never saw an rns on that but I did recall something, and looking it up I see that Hawthorn, who manage NRR's pub portfolio, bought 29 pubs in January 2020, which the news at the time did not have a price for the deal. I think Findlay mentioned the sale in his post results run through on debt reduction. Not a huge number of pubs but it all fits in with the picture we have been looking at.
As a matter of interest Hawthorn, after the Marstons & Bravo deal, hold over 700 pubs a size which surprised me.
When the pub I run was owned by Marstons I was on a contract that is a simple ‘low cost’ entry as a tenant but on paper sounds a lot like a management position, you pay a fixed amount as a security bond to enter the agreement and have a long list of ‘rules’ to follow, basically Marstons pay the rent, gas, electric, some operational costs and they buy the stock for the bar, you pay for staff, business rates, a few bills and if you want to run a kitchen you pay those costs too, in the arrangement the tenant receives 30% of the takings from any wet sales,
We moved from that deal to a standard tenancy on completion of the sale from Marstons to Admiral, I have worked in venues on a multitude of different contracts and have many friends and old co-workers from over the years who are involved in the pub/hospitality trade at all levels,
Any recent conversations I’ve had with anyone working with Marstons or running Marstons tenancy or share-agreements have been positive, the ‘eat out scheme’ has brought a lot of foot fall to most venues
Also, one MASSIVE benefit for Marstons is that the ‘retail’ and ‘foundation’ agreements are all pubs that DO NOT pay them any rent for the buildings, so those pubs have not accrued a debt of rent to Marstons and are all reasonably viable businesses even during covid, most of the pub companies have charged rent to all tenants the whole way through Covid lockdown and this is a mega strain on the finances of these venues and honestly could result in a large percentage of the pub sector to just give up and close their businesses, in the medium to long term, this won’t affect us at shareholder level because the businesses will get a spring clean and be offered to new tenants.
All in all, marstons have a varied selection of contracts in their pubs and I would (with no figures or solid information -simply using my knowledge and background in the sector) confidently say that Marstons are in a strong position because their Managed and Semi-Managed outlets will prop up the leased and tenanted section and enable the whole estate to limp through Covid reopening restrictions,
Most of the other pub companies use a 3rd party logistics and brewing companies to stock their outlets, as marstons use their own fleet (although obviously that has overheads of its own) they continue to supply their own manufactured product to their own pubs, thus continually moving their brewery stock and bringing cash in the tills with less middlemen to pay inbetween.
I’m probably just rambling on now! I suppose that could be classed as an introduction..
I’m currently sat on 500 Marstons shares to retain my discount card! I was up to over 50,000 Marstons shares a few weeks ago but I’ve taken the risk of moving the funds to another area for a few weeks! Hopefully I don’t miss the quite obvious double-up that will inevitably come here!
Stop telling porkies!!
@ sandyman
Who’s ‘telling porkies’
Was that aimed at me?