WAGAMAMA ORDERS £175m LIFELINE

THE owner of Frankie & Benny’s and Wagamama has asked shareholders for a £175m lifeline to see it through the pandemic.

The Restaurant Group (TRG), which has permanently shut over 200 restaurants and laid off 3,000 staff in the pandemic, hopes the cash will give it a cushion if lockdowns are extended.

It could also provide it with firepower to snap up cheap sites in the aftermath of the pandemic as it aims to add around 30 Wagamama restaurants and 35 pubs to its portfolio over the next five years. The FTSE250 firm revealed that total sales dived by 57pc to £459.8m in the year to December 27 due to closures. Losses widened to £127.6m, from £37.3m in 2019.

However, it has enjoyed strong takeaway sales in lockdown. It is delivering 1m Frankie & Benny’s orders a week, five times more than before the pandemic, and 3m from Wagamama.

Chief executive Andy Hornby said the fundraising was ‘cautious’ and would provide spare cash ‘if there were further lockdowns’.

He added: ‘TRG is operationally a much stronger business than 12 months ago.’

FOxTONS has enjoyed the busiest start to a year since 2016.

The estate agent said revenues for the first two months of 2021 were ‘well ahead’ of a year earlier, revealing that it was the best January and February since before the Brexit referendum on a number of measures. It was mainly down to a booming property market sparked by changing buyer demands and the stamp duty holiday. Foxtons reported pre-tax losses of £1.4m for 2020, down from £8.8m in 2019, with revenues falling by 12pc to £93.5m after Covid-19 disruption in the first half of the year.

But since the first lockdown lifted, Britain’s property market has been firing on all cylinders.