NewRiver, a real estate investment trust(REIT) specialising in buying, managing and developing community-focused retail and leisure assets throughout the UK, has acquired a community pub company Bravo Inns for £17.9 million, representing an EBITDA multiple of 6.8x.
Bravo Inns owns 44 wet-led community pubs, predominantly located in North West England. The Bravo Inns management have established a high-quality, well-managed and well-invested operator managed portfolio which complements Hawthorn Leisure’s existing 660 community pub portfolio.
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“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,” said Mark Davies, Chief Financial Officer of NewRiver and CEO of Hawthorn Leisure.
