All of the pubs in Damian Kelly’s Pub Invest portfolio are now under new ownership following the sale of the final two.
The Crown Hotel in Surry Hills and the large format North Nowra Tavern on the NSW South Coast were sold for a combined $52m this week by HTL Property, which was appointed by administrators Wexted Advisory’s Andrew McCabe and Joseph Hayes.
Wexted Advisory was appointed following legal action instigated by investors in the Pub Invest investment trust created by Kelly, a former Citi banker.
The Crown Hotel was acquired by Sydney pub group Universal Hotels. The purchaser of the North Nowra Tavern has not been named.
Parramatta’s Rose & Crown and the Corrimal Hotel in Wollongong were the first in the portfolio to have been sold, the former to Sydney-based Highclere Hospitality for $42m and the latter to “a highly experienced and second-generation hotelier with multiple existing hotel assets” for $32.5m.
The total exit value achieved for the four pub portfolio was more than $127m, and HTL Property’s Dan Dragicevich said, “All four hotels sold represent excellent examples of strong freehold assets with historical and scalable earnings profiles”.
Wexted Advisors Director Andrew McCabe said, “We’re most satisfied with the sale quantum and process and buoyed by the market appetite the campaign highlighted.”