UK holiday park operator put on the market

Park Holidays UK, one of the country’s longest-established holiday home and caravan groups, has been put up for sale by its majority shareholder.

The private equity firm Graphite Capital led a £130 million MBO/MBI of Park Holidays in January 2006 and now wants to reap its profits after having built up sales to £64 million and increased the number of parks owned by the business from 19 to 25. The six additional holiday parks are all based in Devon and were acquired in three transactions.

The previous owners of Park Holidays UK operated the business under the name of Cinque Ports Leisure and had been steadily building up the business for twenty years before the buyout.

Graphite orchestrated a refinancing of the company in 2007, resulting in substantial windfalls to the shareholders.

The private equity group has appointed PriceWaterhouseCoopers to find a purchaser for the company, which is expected to fetch in the vicinity of £200 million.

The caravan park sector has traditionally been very fragmented, with a relatively small percentage of the estimated 1500 or so sites around the UK in the hands of larger corporate operators. However in the last three to four years a wave of consolidations has begun, including last month’s deal by Kings Park Capital to purchase a £15 million tranche of caravan parks in Cornwall and Yorkshire.

The sector has become even more attractive of late, as the number of Britons choosing to holiday at home rather than travel abroad has risen. The ‘staycation’ trend has been partly attributable to the downturn in the economy and the waning of the pound against the Euro.

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