Toxteth Pub sold
Former Qantas chief Geoff Dixon and his mate, ad man and businessman John Singleton, have sold the Toxteth pub in Glebe to Mitchell Waugh's Public House Management Group (PHMG) for $21 million.
PHMG has a number of Sydney hotel properties including The Woollahra Hotel, Paddington's Royal and Four in Hand hotels.
The Toxteth has been in the Australian Pub Fund (APF) portfolio which the two businessmen run with well-known investor Mark Carnegie.
They have sold it to reinvest the takings in new ventures.
The Australian Pub Fund was worth about $300 million, before it started selling its assets as part of its new strategy. The Toxteth is the fourth sale. The Marlborough Hotel in Newtown has also been put on the market.
The APF had been looking at an IPO but with the state of the market, the owners decided to consolidate and focus on earnings, rather than take on new investors or substantially increase the size of the portfolio as an ASX listing might have required.
Ray White Group's Asia-Pacific director, Andrew Jolliffe, who provided advice on the sale said the Toxteth had been trading well over the past two years because it is outside the zone for Sydney’s lockout laws.
"The purchase of this significant fringe CBD hotel asset is consistent with others made by the very well-credentialled PHMG; and the recent operational improvements made to other hotels recently bought for the stable, such as those made to Mosman's Buena Vista, are patently available to the group again in respect of this acquisition," Mr Jolliffe told the Sydney Morning Herald.
"I believe the market conditions that have provided the fertile base for such prosperous activity will remain for the foreseeable future.
"The confluence of the historically low interest rate cycle, ready availability of senior debt, the low Australian dollar driving inbound revenues and the strength of weekly cash receipts when collectively distilled, render the opportunity to acquire A-grade hospitality property wholly compelling."
by Leon Gettler, February 27th 2017
