Echo Entertainment has sold its Jupiters Townsville Hotel & Casino in Queensland for A$70 million to an Australian hotelier called Colonial Leisure Group.
The sale price was close to what Sydney-based Echo was seeking for the property on the country’s northern Pacific coast. The casino contains 320 machine games and 20 live tables. The hotel has 190 rooms and suites.
Echo said it would record an $8 million pre-tax profit on the sale, representing a multiple of 10 times fiscal 2013 earnings.
The property, which has struggled amid limited growth opportunities, had been for sale for months. Echo wants to focus capital resources on expanding in Gold Coast farther south and in Brisbane, where the company’s historic position as sole operator is under assault from rival Crown Resorts and others seeking three new licenses the state is putting up for bid. Echo is after the state’s permission to replace its small, aging Treasury Casino & Hotel in the capital city with a lavish new resort as part of a larger redevelopment planned for the downtown government district.
Colonial Leisure, whose businesses include 15 hotels in Victoria and Western Australia, a brewery in the west, a resort island near the Great Barrier Reef and an aviation service in northern Queensland, said it will make of Jupiters a “leading regional resort, improving the operational and financial performance of the property”.
RelatedPosts
