The board of Admiral Taverns has reached an agreement to acquire Hawthorn, the community pub company, from NewRiver REIT plc. The cash consideration is approximately £222.3 million.
The nationwide portfolio of 674 pubs comprised a mixture of predominately tenanted, leased, and operator managed sites across England, Wales, and Scotland.
The acquisition is a continuation of Admiral’s growth strategy to expand its wet-led community pub portfolio and will take the group’s estate to more than 1,600 pubs. It will be funded through debt provided by Admiral’s current lenders, together with capital provided by existing investor, Proprium Capital Partners.
Chris Jowsey, chief executive of Admiral Taverns, said: “This is one of the biggest acquisitions by Admiral to date and delivers on our strategy to build our estate to 1,500 sustainable pubs. It is a really exciting step forward for the business and we remain committed to the supportive partnership model, which is highly regarded by licensees.
“Our wet-led, community focused, supportive culture is very much shared by Hawthorn, and I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome our new licensees and colleagues to Admiral. The acquisition has allowed us to acquire an excellent portfolio of pubs which we look forward to developing through our award-winning and highly supportive approach.”
Allan Lockhart, chief executive of NewRiver, said: “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.
“We have now agreed the sale of Hawthorn which, once completed, will deliver on our key priority to reset loan to value, strengthening our balance sheet and enabling us to focus on executing our resilient retail strategy.
“I would like to thank the entire Hawthorn team and, in particular, Mark Davies, who the board had previously mandated to lead the divestment of Hawthorn, for their professionalism and dedication throughout the process, which has delivered a great result for NewRiver shareholders.
“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.”
