LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Majestic Wine has entered into an agreement to offload its retail and commercial businesses to CF Bacchus for £95m.
CF Bacchus, also known as BidCo, will pay an initial cash consideration of £78m for the shares of Majestic Wine Warehouses and Les Celliers de Calais, with an additional £5m deferred for two years and contingent on the post-Brexit regulatory landscape and a further £12m to be retained in the form of an unsecured interest-bearing loan note.

Majestic expects the disposal to take place in the fourth quarter of its current trading year.

Elsewhere, a separate agreement to sell a freehold property for net proceeds of £5m plus potential overage payments has been signed with an unnamed property developer.

Majestic said the net proceeds of both transactions would be used to eliminate its debt, invest in the growth of its Naked operations and return £3.8m to shareholders by way of a special dividend of 5.2p each.

Chief executive Rowan Gormley said: "I am delighted that we have managed to secure an independent future for both Naked and Majestic Retail and Commercial, allowing both companies to pursue growth by focusing on their unique propositions.

"We look forward to the future and continuing to focus on what we do best... sharing our spectacular wines from our hundreds of talented winemakers with our customers!"

As of 1030 BST, Majestic shares had crept forward 0.14% to 259.37p.

Email this article to a friend

or share it with one of these popular networks:

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• STUMBLEUPON
• MIXX
• YAHOO BUZZ
• DELICIOUS
• REDDIT
• NEWSVINE