Travel company flying high as it is sold in £27m deal
A SUBSIDIARY of the oldest travel company in India, Cox & Kings, has sold York-based Superbreak.
The total sale and purchase agreement £26.7m with net cash consideration of £9.25m.
The goodwill write-off on sale of Superbreak is £71.4m. Superbreak employs 150 staff at its York headquarters.
Malvern Enterprises UK has acquired the short break business from Cheshire-based subsidiary Holidaybreak, as well as LateRooms UK.
Cox & Kings sold the latter for £20.0m, also to Malvern, after having owned it for only six months.
It is a considerable uplift on the £8.5m the Bombay Stock Exchange listed company paid when it bought the business from German travel firm TUI Group in October last year.
Holidaybreak was acquired in a £312m deal in 2011 by C&K. Since then the Indian group has been selling off parts of the Holidaybreak business, selling a division of the business Explore Worldwide in December 2015 for £25.8m, and in 2014, offloading its camping division.
At the same time, C&K bought a 49% stake in Malvern for £6.37m. The remaining 51% is held by a European private equity investor.
In a statement, Cox & Kings said the transaction will allow Malvern to “independently follow its own strategic growth path in the underpenetrated city-breaks market within the online package-tour space”.
“Brands Superbreak and LateRooms are likely to gain substantially from a unified management team under the strategic guidance of the private equity investor and C&K.”
Cox & Kings has been in operation since 1758.
