Millenium Hotels buys golf courses & land from British firm Costain for €15.2M

Spanish REIT Millenium Hotels Real Estate I SOCIMI (“MHRE”) has paid €15.2M to purchase two golf courses and the land bank owned by Alcaidesa Holding SAU and its subsidiary Alcaidesa Golf, S.L.U. The vendor was Berkshire-based construction company Costain.

The infrastructure giant sold the business, which is near Gibraltar and consists of two golf courses (pictured), land and a clubhouse, to Millennium Hotels Real Estate through a share sale.

Alcaidesa Golf, S.L.U. owned and managed two golf courses (Alcaidesa Links and Alcaidesa Heathland) as well as a plot of land and a club house in the towns of La Línea de la Concepción & San Roque (Cádiz). It halved its operating losses last year to £700,000 on turnover of £5.4m.

Costain has been involved in the Spanish operation for more than 15 years but has determined that the golf courses, along with the marina concession is non-core and will accept a £4m loss on the sale in its next results, as well as a write-down of £4.9m on a nearby a 624-berth marina, which it also hopes to sell soon. The marina concession is located in La Linea, next to Gibraltar. According to the vendor, «the disposal and the potential disposal of the marina concession is part of Costain’s strategy to divest its non-core business assets in Spain,».

Announcing its interim results in August, the firm said that underlying operating profit for 2019 will be down, coming in at between £38m and £42m, meaning its full year figure could be off more than a quarter from last year’s £52.5m.

The mayor of San Roque has stated that the town hall expects to approve a detailed study on the Alcaidesa residential area and the investors plan to develop a new hotel and luxury villas.

The buyers, which were listed as a SOCIMI (Spanish REIT) on the Spanish alternative market in July 2019, recently declared six-month figures with an EBITDA of €1.3M. The group’s pipeline is likely to deliver far more, as the aspirations of CEO Javier Illan Plaza are to drive the group to substantially larger scale.

Most recently, Millenium has announced a €400M capital increase, with two tranches of shares being issued to increase firepower for further acquisitions. The fund also recently agreed to acquire Harry Mohinani’s part-built W Canalejas hotel in Madrid in a €82M deal; and the Melia hotel in Bilbao, at a cost of €49.2M as reported by SpanishREIT.com

According to FT.com, the 5 analysts offering 12 month price targets for Costain Group PLC have a median target of 185.00, with a high estimate of 225.00 and a low estimate of 160.00. The median estimate represents a 19.97% increase from the last price of 154.20.