Things change quickly in hospitality. Yesterday’s £88.4 million equity raising by Young’s came only six weeks after the pub company’s boss said that it would not need to bolster its finances during the lockdown by selling new shares.
Patrick Dardis, 61, the Young’s chief executive, said the group had considered following some peers in raising new equity, but rejected the idea. “Debt is still cheap, so we decided not to go down that route.”
The capital raising came despite his insistence that the scale of the liquidity available to Young’s meant it could cope with a “worst-case scenario, taking us through until pretty much this time next year”.
Young’s, which began as a brewer in Wandsworth, south London, issued new shares equivalent to 19.2 per
