Noble House becomes Pioneer Pub Company
by The PMA Team Noble House, the pub operator led by Robert Breare, is to re-name its pub operation Pioneer Pub Company as it seeks to off-load the remainder of its high street pub estate. Breare has admitted that Noble House struggled for a while when high street operator Valley Hill went into administration and 15 pubs returned to Noble House three months ago. Noble House is currently pursuing directors of Valley Hill, from whom it has personal guarantees, for in excess of £4.5m in debts. He said: "The Valley Hill situation did not put us into insolvency, but put us closer than we would have liked or planned for. But we responded to that and have come out on the other side." Noble House, which was founded in June 2004, plans to operate 49 gastro pubs and local destination venues under the Pioneer name. A further 20 pubs will be retained by Noble House with the likelihood they will be transferred into Pioneer eventually. The company is selling about 25 pubs, including the 15 high-street sites that came back to it after Valley Hill went into administration buyers are in place for 10 of these. Noble House is creating Pioneer to allow greater operational focus and to end on-going confusion between Noble House and sister company Noble House Leisure, which runs restaurant brands such as Jim Thompson's and Arbuckle's. Said Breare: "The confusion between Noble House and Noble House Leisure was getting impossible. The two companies were supposed to be merged at some stage, but did not get merged. "Also, having all the pubs in one company [meant] we were not getting the degree of focus we wanted. We wanted the operational management of our concept and non-concept pubs to be strictly divided with absolute focus on concepts." Noble House received a further cash injection of £4.5m from HBOS in June to allow it tocomplete its refurbishment programme a total of 20 pubs are scheduled for capital investment. Noble House is expected to file its overdue accounts for the year to March 2003 in the coming weeks. Its accounts for the year to March 2002 showed a pre-tax loss of £19.2m with net debt of £102.9m 70% of the losses in this start-up year were non-trading losses. A trade sale or an Alternative Investment Market listing are the most likely outcome for Noble House's private equity backers, which include Hermes and Botts, in the coming years. Breare added: "Like so many equity-backed businesses, structured so that equity looks like debt, you're never going to have a particularly pretty balance sheet. You have to drill through to what the real loans are and what the equity loans are. "I believe that if we continue with our current strategy, finish our capital expenditure programme, drive through our operations and make some acquisitions there will be some very interesting returns [for investors] on exit.
