Event Hospitality & Entertainment’s development plan

Listed leisure company Event Hospitality & Entertainment has announced plans to boost its earnings with a major development in Sydney’s George Street.

The company has spent $166 million purchasing a prime piece of Sydney’s real estate.

Following the tremendous success of its QT Hotel chains led by its flagship central Sydney hotel, the company has moved to expand the hotel as part of a mixed use redevelopment and has purchased two buildings at 458-472 George Street in the CBD.

The company acquired the buildings from the Sydney based Moss family who had been there for 30 years.

It is paying for the acquisition with a mix of cash and debt.

Event Hospitality & Entertainment expects it to provide an “annualised EBITDA uplift of around 1.5 cents per share”.

That would equate to around 2 per cent based on FY 2016’s 78.4 cents in earnings per share.

Event owns a parcel of land spanning about 4700 square metres that includes an 88 metre frontage on a prime section of George Street.

This puts it in a good position to benefit from the light rail development and the revamp of the David Jones buildings.

It’s all part of the company’s expansion plans following the opening of the QT Sydney Hotel in 2012.

Since then, the company has opened copycat hotels in Falls Creek, Canberra, Port Douglas, Gold Coast, Bondi and Wellington.

It says the Melbourne hotel, which opened in September last year is “performing ahead of expectations”.

The Rydges and Atura Hotel brands and several resorts in the popular skiing destination of Thredbo are also part of the Event stable.

So the company has tapped right into the general growth of inbound tourism that Australia is expected to enjoy over the decade ahead.

Event also owns and operates the Event cinema chain in Australia, along with other similar cinema chains in New Zealand and Germany.

by Leon Gettler, April 28^th 2017