Whitbread to sell Premier Inn sites
Whitbread, the leisure group, is to sell seven Premier Inn sites to real-estate investment firm LaSalle Investment Management for £53.8m in a sale and leaseback deal.
The group said it has exchanged agreements on the sites. The deal will see the leisure operator take 25-year leases on the venues, representing an initial yield of 5.5%.
Whitbread said the £53.8m price represents a profit over book value, as at 3 March 2011, of £28.1m.
The sites, which all have a restaurant attached, are in Camberley, Surrey;
Harlow, Essex; Norwich; Chippenham, Wiltshire; Worcester; Hereford and Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. The company said it expects the deal to be completed by September.
Whitbread group finance director Christopher Rogers said: "This sale and leaseback is another example of selectively using
our property as an alternative method of funding future growth.
"In April of this year we announced new five-year growth milestones for the business, to increase Premier Inn rooms by 50% to at least 65,000 and to double the size of Costa."
