Fridays owner Hostmore admitted to London Stock Exchange
Hostmore – the new parent company of restaurant chain Fridays – has started trading on the London Stock Exchange.
The group – which oversees 63rd+1st as well as Fridays – announced a demerger had been completed, separating it from Electra Private Equity.
Shares were admitted to the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning with 126,127,279 ordinary shares at £0.20 each.
“For Hostmore, this is a significant milestone for our two brands and provides us with a solid platform to develop our business through a combination of both the organic addition of individual sites and the acquisition of appropriate smaller brands,” Robert B. Cook, Hostmore’s chief executive officer, said.
“Whilst the industry continues to face the well-publicised headwinds of inflationary pressures and supply chain issues as a result and impact of the Covid-19 ‘whiplash’, our staffing levels and costs and other operating costs are in line with expectations, with utility and other supply costs largely fixed in the medium term.”
Core brand Fridays – formerly labelled TGI Fridays – is set to continue with its “transformation,” with revenue growth for May to October 2021 ahead of the comparable 2019 trading period,
Brand 63rd+1st launched its second site in Glasgow in late September and had “performed in line with our revenue expectations on both average spend and product mix,” Cook added.
A third site will open its doors in late November, in Harrogate.
Electra said it would continue in its current form as a listed investment trust pending a process where shareholder approval would be sought to move its listing from the Main
Market to AIM.
The company will then be renamed Unbound Group and will no longer be an investment trust. Unbound will focus on Hotter Shoes, its main remaining investment.