Admiral Taverns reports £152.8m turnover following Hawthorn acquisition

Pub group Admiral Taverns has reported turnover of £152.8m in its financial results to 29 May 2022 following its acquisition of rival pubco Hawthorn last year.

The group acquired 674 Hawthorn pubs in August 2021 for £222m, an integration it described as “successful” and “transformational”.

The business also reported operating profit of £21.2m and a loss after tax of £6.6m.

During the year, Admiral said it invested £28m in capex, with an estate valuation of £589.8m, reflecting the acquisition of the Hawthorn portfolio with 64 disposals during the period resulting in a total estate of 1,547 pubs at the financial year end.

The group added that pubs traded ahead of management’s expectations through September 2022, helped by buoyant drink sales from the tenanted pub estate.

Chris Jowsey, chief executive of Admiral, said: “Our highly supportive and proactive measures to protect our licensees during the pandemic have enabled the business to recover quickly and I’m pleased to see most pubs returning to pre-2019 trading levels. The Hawthorn acquisition was a transformational event for the business, and I am delighted to have successfully completed the integration of these pubs into our estate, welcoming a number of new colleagues and licensees into the Group.

“The current economic environment creates a challenging backdrop for our publicans, but our community based, wet-led pubs continue to demonstrate their resilience, and are well situated within their communities to provide affordable hospitality. We have a passionate belief in the value of community pubs and have delivered several strategic initiatives to support licensees through this period, including our £1m investment into energy saving measures and £28m CAPEX investment across the year.

“As we look to the future, we continue to focus on our strategic plans to acquire, develop and maintain a high-quality estate of successful, individual wet-led community pubs at the heart of their communities. We remain optimistic that our supportive model, and high-quality estate of pubs puts us in a good position to trade through this challenging macroeconomic environment and continue to make progress against our long term strategy.”

Headquartered in Chester, Admiral Taverns operates around 1,550 predominantly wet-led community pubs.