Stonegate has been looking precarious at times, never mind the asset backing. The Run Rate Adjusted EBITDA calculations have been dubious from the start and continue to exclude every negative trend that the company already knows well about. Still, the momentum is now with pub companies and the Platinum transaction should provide enough liquidity to refinance in one way or another. So, buying a name at par that might refinance within a year and that still struggles to pay for its interest is unusual to say the least, but we don’t think we will be losing money here and the near 11% coupon pays for it.

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Mildly alarming news for the bonds this morning. Stonegate is under regulatory investigation from the Pubs Code Adjudicator over its

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The market had been anticipating this strong performance after other pub groups had already reported on the positive

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Mildly positive for the bonds today: the sale of Platinum pubs seems to be underway, as press reports that Terra Firma is among the

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The strong LfL growth we had already seen from players such as Mitchell and Butlers the other day was also reflected at Stonegate. However, it was

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The 10.75% ‘29s are up by a point to par. This is the month that Apollo's Platinum financing becomes callable, and the robust

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Please find our updated analysis of Stonegate here.

Following the Q325 results we felt we should raise our projections for the company as operating expenses turned out better than expected. However,

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The update this morning is incremental. We love how a year ago the Euros were downplayed as having only a minor effect on the business, but

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Please find our updated analysis of Stonegate here.

The 18-Month plan underlying the recapitalisation was presented some 18 months ago, and we’ve had a look for its effects. We’d be cynical to say we didn’t find any, but it has almost entirely been absorbed by demand elasticity and labour cost headwinds, so that

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Following Moody’s, Fitch has now also downgraded Stonegate to CCC+. The bonds yield over 10% and so reflect the ratings, but we agree with the

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Moody’s downgrade to Caa1 is deserved, even if the company has already hired Alix partners and is trimming its management layers. These actions are

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Press reports this morning state that Stonegate has hired Alix Partners to trim its management ranks. Numbers circulate of 150

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Stonegate continues to do better than we thought, as L&T continues to do well. Managed Pubs and Operator Led are continuing their decline while

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Stonegate reported benign figures on Friday. Our concerns that, following the restructuring, management would have some unexpected

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Please find our updated analysis here.

So it’s been complicated - very much along expectations and justifying our caution about participating in this deal. The best pubs have had to be spun off into a

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