Greene King to buy 4 Punch Taverns pub restaurants for £5.3 mln

Greene King PLC (LON:GNK) announced an agreement to acquire four pub restaurants from Punch Taverns PLC (LON:PUB) for £5.3 in cash, financed from the funds raised by the company's recent rights issue, the deal is expected to complete on 8 July 2010.
Greene King called the pub restaurants highly attractive, food-led, destination sites in Aberdeen, Northampton and Nottingham. In the year to August 2009, these sites generated EBITDA of £342,000.
It expects, following targeted capital investment and operational synergies from integration into Greene King, that these sites will return to more normalised, historic trading levels, equating to approximately 7x EBITDA. Following this acquisition, from both targeted packages and single sites, Greene King will have invested £100 million of the rights issue proceeds in acquiring and improving 34 high quality, freehold, retail sites and repurchasing below par debt.

Rooney Anand, chief executive of Greene King, commented: "We are very pleased to have acquired these sites. They are freehold retail sites in great locations currently trading below their potential. We expect to convert the sites into our market-leading pub restaurant brands, Hungry Horse and Eating Inn, further strengthening our position in the UK eating out market."