Four Seasons turnaround gathers pace
Cheshire-based Four Season, the UK’s largest care home operator, has increased its like-for-like turnover to 8.4% £686.2m for 2016.
It also reported an EBITDA of £55.4m, 43%, higher than the previous year.
The average occupancy in its care homes for 2016 of 88.4% was 3.1 percentage points higher than in 2015. Occupancy increased to 90% in the final quarter of 2016, which the company said is the highest level for over three years and ahead of the overall sector estimate of 88.4%.
Four Seasons said it invested £43m in its estate during the year, including maintenance capital expenditure of £27.3m. This, it said, equated to over £1,370 per bed – £60 per bed more than during 2015.
Robbie Barr, chairman of the Four Seasons Health Care group, said: “The group achieved a strong turnaround in operational and business performance during 2016, with marked improvements in care quality, occupancy, employee engagement and financial results.”
The group ended the first quarter of 2017 with a cash balance of £44m.
Barr said: “This, together with further expected disposals, provides sufficient medium-term financing to allow the group to continue to focus on driving further improvements to our operational and financial performance, whilst engaging constructively with key stakeholders towards reaching a debt and capital structure which is more appropriate to its long-term requirements.
He added: “I am confident that we have the right strategies in place in each of our three businesses to continue to build on the turnaround in performance. The recently announced additional Government funding for the sector, if it is delivered, as intended, to front line care, will contribute to further growth.”
Earlier this month it emerged that the company is set to offload its mental health division in a bid to cut its debts of more than £500m.
The company, owned by private equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners, has appointed bankers to sell Huntercombe Group.
Any prospective deal is expected to realise tens of millions of pounds and will make a dent Four Seasons’ deficit.
Pressure on Four Seasons’ finances have ramped up in an environment of intensifying cost pressures triggered by the introduction of the National Living Wage, local authority funding constraints and a shortage of nursing staff.
Four Seasons has an annual debt interest bill of about £50m, and the company has acknowledged the need to put its finances on a more stable long-term footing.
Guy Hands’ Terra Firma paid £825m for Four Seasons – which runs around 300 care homes across Britain – in 2012. During the last two years it has sold or closed more than 50 sites.
