Listed Lantern Group’s final countdown has begun, with news of the premium sale of Uncle Buck’s Hotel to the family-operated De Angelis Group.
The ASX-announcement by Lantern (LTN) said the sale price of $25.3 million represented a 30.5 per cent premium to the 30 June book value.
Uncle Buck’s in Mount Druitt fits neatly into the growing De Angelis western Sydney portfolio, joining the likes of Burwood’s Bath Arms and Campbelltown’s Macarthur Tavern.
Group patriarch, Peter De Angelis, told PubTIC he can’t wait to get in there.
“Uncle Buck’s is exciting for us as a diversified purchase,” said De Angelis. “It has a great retail mix, contributing to the bottom line upside in both reach and height levels.”
The Hotel sits on a 5,640 m² site between the shopping centre and hospital, minutes from Mt Druitt station. It is zoned B4 mixed use, with 32m height approval and generous 3:1 FSR. It holds a 24-hour licence and currently operates 27 EGMs.
“We have big plans for it,” continues De Angelis. “We identified it as under-valued and underdone six months ago.
“We’ll sit down and masterplan the whole site, adjust the hotel offering and look at how the retail components work, considering the height and FSR benefits.”
De Angelis reports he will be talking with Council in coming weeks, and is already looking to “tighten” the settlement date, currently projected for February.
Both Uncle Buck’s and Ambervale Hotel were commissioned to market by LTN through CBRE Hotels’ Daniel Dragicevich and Sam Handy, with high expectations following the Group’s recent successes in premium pricing for divestments, and epic sale of the Commodore Hotel.
Dragicevich said the response was to Uncle Buck’s was as large as expected, but De Angelis was swift and determined.
“Assets such as this are seldom publicly offered to market, which contributed to a keenly contested process, yielding an exchange of contracts some four days prior to the scheduled close of the campaign.
“Lantern has done a great job adding value to the asset over the past twelve months and the venue will no doubt continue to grow under the De Angelis Hotel Group’s guidance.”
CBRE report negotiating over $200m in pub sales in NSW in 2016 across 29 transactions. Sam Handy suggests there is a “rapidly diminishing” pool of AAA gaming assets under private ownership that could be available for acquisition in any immediate future.
BREAKING: Despite rumours that its Courthouse Hotel in Cairns could be compulsorily acquired by Council, potentially negating the sale to Pelathon Group, LTN announced this morning the $6.25m sale of the historic top-end pub has been completed.
