Dean hotels lost €8.8m in year before sale to investors
The company behind the Dean chain of hotels lost more than €8.8 million in the year before Paddy McKillen jnr sold a majority stake in the group to US and UK investors.
New accounts filed in Dublin by Warlington Key reveal the group generated a turnover of close to €12.8 million in the year, €6.6 million of which came from food and beverage sales. Room and accommodation revenues reached €5.6 million.
Warlington Key, which Mr McKillen jnr and his business partner Matt Ryan incorporated in 2022, was used in an inter-group transaction to acquire the trading entity behind the Dean group, Holtend Ltd, in May 2023 for €13.3 million.
Proceeds from the transaction, which split the Dean Group from the wider Press Up hospitality group, were used to repay the group's banking facility with Cheyne Capital, according to the most recent set of accounts for Holtend.
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Cheyne Capital is the London-based alternative lender that separately acquired a 95 per cent stake in the Press Up last year after turning €25 million of debt into equity in the business.
Administrative expenses at Warlington Key, including wages and salaries, topped €10.4 million in 2023, but exceptional costs of €4.5 million related to management services costs within the group dragged the company to a €3.7 million operating loss for the year.
It meant that before tax, the company lost some €8.8 million, owing its lenders some €3.4 million in interest payments on its borrowings at the end of 2023.
Mr McKillen jnr and Mr Ryan sold a majority stake in the Dean Hotel group to British property group Lifestyle Hospitality Capital and US investment giant Elliott Investment Management in a transaction completed in April 2024.
Initially reported in late 2023, the portfolio of hotels included in the deal at the time comprised the Dean Dublin, the Mayson, the Devlin, the Dean Cork and the Dean Galway.
Three other Press Up-operated hotels – the Clarence Hotel on Wellington Quay, the Leinster Hotel on Lower Mount Street, and the Glasson Lakehouse near Athlone in Co Westmeath – were eventually added to the deal, which valued the portfolio at some €355 million.
Separately, Cheyne Capital last week petitioned the High Court to have an examiner appointed to Workman's Club, the former Press Up company behind some 12 venues in Dublin, including the eponymous bar and nightclub on Wellington Quay.
The court heard the immediate cause of the court application was a demand from the group's financiers RELM Capital for some €4.5 million in March.
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