Macdonald hotels embark on historic upgrade program after debt cut
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
Macdonald Hotels has taken £78m from its strategic divestiture programme, which will see the firm generate an annual profit of £29.2m by October 1, 2020.
The group has sold four of its hotels, which includes the Ruslan Hotel in St Andrews, the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, the Swan Hotel in Grasmere and Loch Rannoch Hotel in Perthshire.
These were expected to generate positive cash flow from operations of £64m, and to reduce debt by further £125.5m, from £195m.
Despite a comparable operating loss of £36.9m for the 53 weeks to Oct. 1, 2020, compared with a profit of £16.2m for the 18 months to September 2019, chairman Gordon Fraser said that the divestiture strategy had left the company in its "strongest financial position of the past two decades"