Novus Leisure is the operator of a portfolio of 52 premium bars and restaurants, predominately located in London’s City and West End and based on a pre-booking sales system, has reported double digit growth and a 50% increase in profit for the 53 weeks to 27 June 2012, and an adjusted profit of £17.3 m for the financial year. The business has funding in place and expects to be active in acquisitions.
Highlights
- Sales grew 25.4% to £133.8m from £106.7m with all parts of the business in double digit growth
- Like for like sales grew by 12.2% (37 venues)
- EBITDA increased by 50% from £11.1m to £16.7m.
- Adjusted EBITDA of £17.3m (excluding disruption costs of £0.5m)
- Pre – booked sales: growth continues to be driven by market leading, pre-booking system accounting for £64.1m (55.1%) of total revenues. This rises to over 70% of revenue during peak Christmas trading weeks
- Food sales: continued to rise with a +32% improvement during the period. Novus operates some of the highest turnover food businesses in the UK
- Digital: £1m invested on the further development of this platform, extending competitive advantage, with the web portal; latenightlondon.co.uk extensively upgraded and refreshed in the period. A further £1m of investment is earmarked for this year which will see the launch of a latenightlondon.co.uk APP and ‘state of the art’ CRM system
- Existing estate investment: capital investment of £4.5m across the 52 existing sites (including the Balls Brother sites acquired in May 2010), investment focused on adding further bookable space (private dining rooms, private booths etc). Over 30% of Novus’s total capacity (of 36,000) is now ‘bookable space’ and the Directors intend to increase this to 40% within 12 months.
- Capex returns: an average payback of 2.1 years and 40% return on investment in new acquisitions
Note: four weeks after the close of the financial year, 100% of the Group’s share capital was acquired for £100m on the 29th July 2012 by LGV Capital and Hutton Collins following an auction process run by Rothschild. LGV and Hutton Collins support the Group’s growth strategy to double its central London portfolio over the next few years. This will consolidate and enhance Novus’ market leading position in the premium bar London market. Looking further forward Novus also has the potential to expand outside its London core to cities such as Manchester, Bristol and Leeds.
Current trading
- London remains a buoyant marketplace, LFL trading remained positive during the Olympics as a result of pre-booked business and Novus anticipates it will continue to benefit in the long term from the Olympic legacy
- Balance sheet strengthened materially following acquisition by LGV Capital and Hutton Collins in July 2012. Bank debt reduced from £79.9m (at 1 July 2012) to £37.5m.
- The business has access to significant acquisition funding from its new majority shareholders
- Trading since the summer has been subdued but Christmas 2012 bookings are substantially up on a strong year last year and the business is expecting strong growth.
- The business is active in acquiring new assets and engaged in a number of processes.
Steve Richards, Chief Executive of Novus Leisure, commented:
“Our market leadership in London and ongoing appeal of our premium venues to the affluent 25-33-somethings, together with a high food element and our pre-eminence in generating revenue from our pre-bookings system have all contributed to our ability to significantly outperform the market.
“We anticipate that the London market will remain buoyant for the foreseeable future and over the next few weeks we are looking forward to a strong Christmas performance.
“We have a growth strategy backed by LGV Capital and Hutton Collins to double our central London portfolio over the next few years. With access to significant funding from our new owners we will strengthen our existing cluster footprint by acquiring between 30 and 40 outlets over the next few years, enhancing and extending Novus’ market leading position in the London premium bar market.”