Hollywood Bowl Group PLC (LON:BOWL) is taking an upbeat view on post-Covid-19 trading as it announced a £30mln bookbuild placing to reboot its site expansion programme.
The bowling centre group put new openings on hold when the lockdowns were imposed but said today it had dusted off plans to open seven new ten-pin bowling centres by September 2024.
A further nine possible sites are subject to legal terms being agreed but Hollywood Bowl reckons with a fair wind it can be on-site at three of these by the end of 2021.
Each of these sites requires around £2.4mln in capital investment and fit-out spending said the £400mln main market-listed business.
This year, the group said it is also targeting a further six Pins on Strings installations, completion of the rollout of its new scoring systems and an upgrade to its CRM infrastructure.
Refurbishments meanwhile are scheduled to be completed at Stevenage and Basildon by May and at Glasgow (2), Liverpool and Cheltenham.
At 28 February 2021, the group had £11.3mln of cash and gross debt of £29.2mln.
A cash burn of approximately £3.6mln is expected between March 2021 and 17 May 2021, when the group's English centres are due to reopen, while March 2021 rent and deferred rent payments are approximately £5.8mln.
Any further delays to the reopening of the English sites would put the balance sheet under significant pressure, it added.
Shares fell 4% to 240p.