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(Alliance News) - NewRiver REIT PLC on Monday said it has agreed the sale of Hawthorn Leisure REIT Ltd, NewRiver's entire community pub business, to Admiral Taverns for GBP222.3 million.
London-based NewRiver REIT is a real estate investment trust, focused primarily on retail and leisure property. Hawthorn, either directly or indirectly, holds all of NewRiver's community pub business, comprising 674 leased & tenanted and operator-managed community pubs.
Admiral Taverns is a community pub operator, with about 1,000 pubs across England, Wales and Scotland. Dublin-based beer and cider maker C&C Group PLC has a minority investment in Admiral. The pubs are 'wet-led', meaning focus on drinks sales rather than serving food.
Back in April, the retail and leisure property investor unveiled plans for a possible spin-off and listing of community pub chain Hawthorn. After a review, NewRiver said it decided to divest the community pub business in order to reset its loan-to-value ratio and provide "firepower" to reshape its portfolio.
NewRiver said on Monday it has GBP73 million worth of disposals exchanged or under offer from its non-core retail portfolio.
Chief Executive Allan Lockhart said on Monday: "Over recent years, we have grown Hawthorn to become the UK's leading community and wet-led pub business. As a consequence of this, we received significant interest from a range of potential buyers for Hawthorn, following the divestment plan we announced in April 2021.
"Alongside the new dividend policy which we announced recently in our full year results, and increased transactional evidence in the parts of the retail investment market that we are focused on, we look forward with genuine confidence."
By Amrit Sahota; newsroom@alliancenews.com
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