Nightcap offers 2.69m share options to staff

The company, which owns The Cocktail Club, the Adventure Bar Group and the Barrio Familia group of bars, said the options have been granted pursuant to Nightcap’s existing share option plans and include grants under the company share option plan and the grant of unapproved options. All of the Options have been granted on the same terms.

Some 1,500,000 options have been granted to Elizabeth Hills and Thomas Kidd who are “persons discharging managerial responsibilities”. The other 1,190,000 options have been granted to group employees.

Exercisable from third anniversary

All of the options have been granted with an exercise price of 10p, representing a premium of 17.6% to the closing mid-market share price on 14 December 2022.

The options will become exercisable from the third anniversary of the grants until the 10th anniversary of the date of the grant but will only be exercisable when and if the company was profitable in the prior accounting year.

Following these option grants, Nightcap’s entire option pool is now equivalent to 12.16% of the company’s issued ordinary share capital.

Plea to end strikes

In late November, Nightcap joined UKHospitality in a plea to rail unions to cancel strikes​ as hospitality faces a tough winter and even offered free drinks to rail staff if action was halted.

A joint statement from Nightcap chief executive Sarah Willingham and executive director Michael Toxvaerd said at the time: “We recognise times are hard for everybody including members of the RMT Union and believe that the members have a right to strike and a right to fight for fair terms. However, December should be sacrosanct.

“We are calling on the RMT Union to move the strikes to third week of January and we shall offer a free drink in our Nightcap bars to all RMT members (on their days off) in January.

“In return, all we ask is you keep December strike-free to allow people to celebrate with their friends and loved ones this Christmas.”