D&D London, which owns and operates restaurants in London, Leeds, Paris, Istanbul, New York and Tokyo and the 80 bedroom South Place Hotel in London, announced its financial results for the year ended 31 March 2013. Highlights of the year were as follows:
- TURNOVER of +5% to £79.0m (2012 £75.5m)
- EBITDA +6%. to £7.1m. (2012 £6.7m)
- Cash profits after financing costs of + 17% to £4.9m (2012 £4.2m)
- Strong revenue performances at:
- Guastavino’s, New York +14%
- Kensington Place +9%
- Bluebird +8%
- Plateau +8%
- Significant new ventures launched during the financial year in London and Leeds
- Old Bengal Warehouse, London
- South Place Hotel, London
- Trinity, Leeds
Des Gunewardena, Chairman and CEO of D&D London commented:
“2012/13 was an important financial year for D&D. We launched a number of new ventures. We opened restaurants at the Old Bengal Warehouse in the City and at Land Securities Trinity retail development in Leeds. We also opened our first hotel, the 80 bedroom luxury South Place Hotel in the City. Against this we sold our restaurant investment in Copenhagen. As most of our openings were towards the end of 2012 and in 2013 their full impact will only be reflected in the results of the current financial year which will see a substantial growth in revenues.
“In terms of our established restaurants, we benefited from the Olympics. The Olympics resulted in a record- breaking August for most of our restaurants. But this only made up for a cold and wet Summer which depressed the revenues of the several restaurants which have outside terraces (Le Pont de la Tour, Butlers Wharf ChopHouse, Coq d’Argent etc.).
“Trading in 2013 has been strong with like for like sales (ex Olympics) for the financial year to date running c.4% ahead of last year. Our new ventures both in London and Leeds are also performing extremely well and have been well received both by customers and critics alike. South Place Hotel has been nominated for a number of industry awards and this month was awarded a Michelin star for its fish restaurant Angler. South Place Hotel, Old Bengal Warehouse and our restaurants in Leeds (Angelica and Crafthouse) will be important contributors to a significant growth in revenue and profits in 2013/14.
New financial partner
“In April this year we secured private equity house LDC as our new financial partner. This was a major step for D&D as LDC acquired Conran and Caird’s equity stakes in the business resulting in D&D becoming for the first time completely independent of Conran. Following this transaction we appointed a number of non-executive Directors to our investment board, including non-executive Chairman Simon Sherwood (ex CEO of Orient Express Hotels) and Daniel Sasaki and Bertie Aykroyd from LDC. Having LDC as a shareholder and Simon, Daniel and Bertie on board are major assets for our business going forward. Prospects for both our restaurants and fledgling hotel business look good and, with some exciting projects in the pipeline, I am very optimistic about the future.”