The company behind Press Up Group’s Dean Hotel on Dublin’s Harcourt Street swung to a nearly €2.3 million operating loss in the year leading up to the sale of a majority stake in the wider hotel group to UK and US investors.
New accounts for Holtend Ltd, which owns the Dean Hotel and Sophie’s restaurant business names, reveal a sharp uptick in trading revenues in the year to the end of May 2023 to €10.9 million from €7.5 million in the previous year as business levels rebounded from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
But a more than doubling of the hotel company’s administrative expenses from just over €5.4 million to nearly €11.7 million in the year erased Holtend’s gross profits.
Consequently, the company sank to a €2.26 million operating loss in the year from an almost €3 million operating profit in the year to the end of May 2022.
Holtend’s cost base widened as the company ramped up hiring in the year, with staff numbers climbing from 175 to 241 and wages and salaries costs soaring by in excess of 225 per cent to €8.5 million.
Meanwhile, “other operating income” in the form of Covid-related Government grants fell to zero in the year from in excess of €2.9 million.
After tax, the company slumped to a €3.7 million loss in the 12 months to the end of May 2023, down from a €2.3 million profit in 2022.
The accounts cover the period before Press Up owners Paddy McKillen Jnr and Matt Ryan completed the sale of the Dean Hotel Group in the early part of 2024 to British property group Lifestyle Hospitality Capital (LHC) and Elliott Investment Management, the New York-headquartered investment giant founded by billionaire Paul Singer.
The sale and manage-back transaction, which sees Press Up continue to manage the hotel operations, includes the Dean hotels in Dublin, Galway and Cork as well as the Glasson Lakehouse in Co Westmeath, the Butler Arms Hotel in Waterville, Co Kerry and the Mayson, the Devlin and the Clarence in Dublin.
[ Pretax profits at Clarence Hotel treble to €1.43mOpens in new window ]
The deal valued the portfolio at about €355 million and gave LHC and Elliott a stake of more than 70 per cent.
Separate accounts filed recently by Brushfield Ltd – the entity behind the Clarence Hotel – show that pretax profits went from €457,083 to €1.43 million as revenues rose by €2 million from €2.8 million to €4.85 million in the 12 months to the end of May last year.
The deal for the Clarence came only months after Bono, The Edge and Paddy McKillen snr sold the Clarence hotel last October to the Dean Hotel Group, ending the U2 members’ connection with the four-star hotel after more than three decades of ownership.
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