Paddy Power bets big on shop sale and lease plan

Fancy a €6.3m flutter with bookies Paddy Power, and a guaranteed return on your spend?

Do you like the sound of a €480,000 a year payout from Paddy Power, in return for your punt? Well, consider becoming a Paddy Power physical property landlord.

The international and online bookmaking chain is looking to sell, and then to lease back, 14 of its Irish properties, all in one lot for €6.3m, with eight of them located in Dublin and three in Munster — Cork city centre, Tralee, and Thurles.

There are also shops in Maynooth and Drogheda.

The sale and leaseback offer goes to the open market from today via agent Stephen McCarthy of Savills, who gambles on it being “one of the most high-profile Irish retail investment sales of 2019”.

New leases on the premises will be signed for 15 years by Flutter Entertainment Plc, parent company of Paddy Power, which employs 7,500 and had group revenues of £1.873bn last year, and which is quoted on London’s FTSE and the Irish Stock market.

The company is prepared to wager on five-yearly rent reviews, linked to the Consumer Price Index, or to open market values at those times, whichever is the higher, as a sweetener to investors.

Paddy Power locations in the race include Cornmarket Street, Cork city, Castle Street, Tralee, Thurles, Maynooth and Drogheda. In Dublin, they include Upper Baggot Street and Parnell Street, as well as suburban shops.

Summoning likely well-heeled punters, Savills’ Mr McCarthy says “the Paddy Power Portfolio offers investors an opportunity to acquire a variety of long-established and well-located Dublin and Cork city centre properties complimented with a host of established suburban and provincial town locations offering the purchaser long term market rent protection underpinned by an exceptional global plc covenant”.