There doesn't seem to be much of a rest for Dalata Hotel (DAL) bosses given the slew of recent acquisitions and refurbishments. The group has spent some €73m (£62m) on acquiring the leasehold of four hotels and freehold of three others, and splashed out another €31m on snapping up three hotel development sites in Dublin and Cork and another in Belfast. The development sites will create roughly 675 rooms in Ireland, adding to the 6,601 rooms the group owns or leases across the entire group.
Trading across the existing estate looks to have been comfortable, too, with revenue per available room (RevPAR), a key performance metric, up 11 per cent to €74.90, thanks to a small increase in occupancy rates and an 11 per cent rise in average room rates to €94.78. But the reduction in the value of sterling has had a negative impact on those earnings generated in the UK but translated into euros. Although management said it had not seen any discernible impact from the Brexit vote yet, it did say RevPAR was likely to grow at a "somewhat reduced pace" for the rest of 2016.
Analysts at Davy expect pre-tax profits of €59.7m for the year to December 2016, leading to EPS of 27.1¢, compared with €28.5m and 14.5¢ in 2015.
| DALATA HOTEL GROUP (DAL) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD PRICE: | 369p | MARKET VALUE: | £675m | |
| TOUCH: | 358-373p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 405p | LOW: 280p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | nil | PE RATIO: | 19 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 316¢ | NET DEBT: | 33% | |
| Half-year to 30 Jun | Turnover (€m) | Pre-tax profit (€m) | Earnings per share (¢) | Dividend per share (¢) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 97.7 | 2.7 | 0.4 | nil |
| 2016 | 130.1 | 18.2 | 8.5 | nil |
| % change | +33 | +585 | +1873 | - |
Ex-div: na Payment: na £1=€1.19 | ||||
