Lantern offloads Uncle Bucks and Cairns Courthouse Hotel

The Lantern Hotel Group’s mass selloff of its pubs portfolio is nearing its conclusion after deals to offload two more hotels.

In the latest sale, family-owned De Angelis Hotel Group swooped on the Uncle Bucks Hotel and an adjacent commercial precinct in Mount Druitt in a deal worth $25.3 million.

The price represented a 30.5% boost on the hotel’s book value at the end of the financial year.

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And in a separate sale, Lantern revealed it has finally sold the Cairns Courthouse Hotel, after mooting the sale in July before Cairns Regional Council announced it would compulsorily acquire the property, reportedly without informing its owners.

But in an ASX announcement on Monday, Lantern says it has now finalised the deal under its original terms, which indicates a sale price of $6.25 million.

Uncle Bucks Hotel in Mount Druitt is the latest Lantern-owned hotel to be sold. Picture: Supplied.

Lantern once owned around a dozen hotels, mostly in New South Wales, before a decision to part ways with the portfolio after the group’s board was replaced in mid-2015.

Among the assets sold so far is North Sydney’s Commodore Hotel, which traded last month for $14.5 million. It also sold the Bowral Hotel in May, the Exchange Hotel in Hamilton in June, Mudgee’s Lawson Park Hotel in August, Bundaberg’s Central Hotel in September and Perth’s Brisbane Hotel late last month.

Assets such as this are seldom publicly offered to market

De Angelis Hotel Group’s purchase of Uncle Bucks adds to its growing hotel portfolio, which includes the Moorebank Hotel, Green Valley Hotel and Bath Arms Hotel.

Uncle Bucks Hotel features a significant gaming operation on a 5640sqm site, with 27 gaming machines, a 24-hour liquor licence and ‘early opener’ flexibility.

CBRE’s Daniel Dragicevich and Sam Handy negotiated the sale.

The Cairns Courthouse Hotel has finally been sold.

Dragicevich says with opportunities currently few and far between in Sydney’s pub market, investors have been quick to act.

“Assets such as this are seldom publicly offered to market, which contributed to a keenly contested process which yielded an exchange of contracts some four days prior to the scheduled close of the campaign,” he says.

“Lantern has done a great job adding value to the asset over the past 12 months and the venue will no doubt continue to grow under the De Angelis Hotel Group’s guidance.”

“The availability of Sydney’s AAA gaming pubs is rapidly diminishing, with only a small pool of these assets remaining under private individual ownership and seemingly available for acquisition in the foreseeable future,” Handy adds.