Hollywood Bowl raises £30m in placing to accelerate expansion

Hollywood Bowl said on Friday that it has raised around £30m in a placing to accelerate its expansion plans.

The ten-pin bowling operator placed just over 13m shares through an accelerated bookbuild - a stake of about 8.3% - at 230p each. This is an 8% discount to the closing share price on Thursday.

The proceeds will allow Hollywood Bowl "to invest in new centre opening opportunities, resume its planned revenue generating and cost saving capex programme in existing centres and to strengthen the balance sheet".

Chief executive Stephen Burns said: "Today's successful placing allows us to reignite our customer-led growth strategy as we look ahead to the reopening of our estate, enabling investment in our exciting new centre pipeline, our ongoing refurbishment programme, as well as the rollout of initiatives to enhance our customer proposition.

"We look forward to welcoming our customers and team members back to our centres in May."