Trio of Tassie pubs snapped up in $30m deal
Melbourne-based boutique investment house Pentagon Group has swooped on three Tasmanian pubs sold by the wholesale EBC Hotel & Leisure Fund in a deal worth about $30 million.
The transaction, brokered by JLL Hotels & Hospitality, includes three freehold going-concern hotels; the Old Tudor Hotel in Launceston, The Bayside Inn in St Helens and the Foreshore Tavern on Hobart’s outskirts.
All up they span 4.58ha of land, 132 accommodation rooms, 90 gaming machines and spin off revenues of about $17 million.
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JLL national director John Musca says the scalability of the assets drove significant interest from mainland hotel groups that looked at the stable earnings platform in Tasmania, which is a key tourism market.
JLL executive vice-president Peter Harper says the interest in and sale of the portfolio again highlights the increasing recognition of Tasmania’s underlying tourism potential and the growth anticipated in the state over the long term.
The pubs were the last assets in the special-purpose EBC Fund that last year sold its Ophir Tavern in Orange for $6.2 million. The sale was the first portfolio hotel sale in Tasmania since the part selldown of the Goodstone Group in 2011 for $27 million, also managed by JLL. Gaming operators are also jockeying for position in the state.
“The Tasmanian Liberal government has proposed new gaming legislation which is expected in the next 12 months and believed to likely mirror the highly lucrative Victorian model,” Musca says.
The changes are “expected to deliver an earnings windfall for hotel operators”.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
