The debt facility refinances Red Oak’s existing debt and provides new capital to drive future expansion with £50m serving as an acquisition facility for new assets and investment including capital expenditure into the existing estate.
The company, which now operates more than 200 sites, was founded in 2011 by Mark Grunnell and Aaron Brown. The pub estate is primarily leased and tenanted pubs across the UK.
Next stage
Red Oak co-founder and chief executive Mark Grunnell said: “We are pleased to have secured this facility and it has been a pleasure to work with Excellion.
“Our new financing provides us with the capital to continue to expand our portfolio and helps us along the next stage of our journey.”
In March this year, the group revealed it had recapitalised, giving it additional capital to help enable its acquisition programme.
At the end of last year (December), the company completed the acquisition of eight free-of-tie sites in Bristol for an undisclosed sum from Euphorium Pubs – its fifth portfolio acquisition in 12 months.
This followed the group securing funding with a £15m acquisition facility from OakNorth Bank.
Funding history
The capital was used to acquire nine pubs from Hall & Woodhouse in September last year. The sites were across the south with pubs in Surrey, West Sussex, Dorset and East Sussex featured.
The deal to acquire the Hall & Woodhouse pubs was Red Oak’s third pub package purchase in 2021.
It followed a 10 pub deal from Wells & Co in February and three pubs from Reclamation Inns at the start of last year (January). Those 10 tenanted and leased pubs were in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.
On the latest credit facility, Excellion Capital managing director Ashley Marks added: “It was a pleasure working with Red Oak, which really impressed is with the quality of its management team and its operations, especially given the challenges posed by the pandemic.
“Red Oak has proved to be an extremely strong operator in a challenging industry and we’re glad to assist [the company] in a transaction, which will help turbocharge the next stage of growth.”
