Mount Juliet estate up for sale with €45m price tag for hotel and golf resort

Tetrarch Capital is gearing up for a significant return on its investment in the Mount Juliet estate in Kilkenny. Having paid €15 million to secure ownership of the five-star hotel and golf resort in 2014, the company is putting it up for sale at a guide price of €45 million.

In a letter sent on Friday evening to the members of Mount Juliet Estate, Mount Juliet director Damien Gaffney said commercial real estate advisers JLL Ireland had been appointed to “explore the market and manage the sale process”.

Commenting on Tetrarch’s stewardship of the 125-bedroom hotel, its Michelin-starred Lady Helen restaurant, Jack Nicklaus Signature Design Course and the wider 500-acre estate, he said the company had “invested very materially” in the resort and was “very proud to have overseen such a significant transformation”.

Mr Gaffney said the current owners were “thrilled to stage two back-to-back Irish Opens in 2021 and 2022 to our Jack Nicklaus signature golf course for the first time since the mid ‘90s – fulfilling a promise we made to members when we acquired the estate in the summer of 2014”.

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Mr Gaffney concluded the letter by saying that while the sale process would commence immediately, “all golf-related activities and operations will continue as normal, and all our employees’ positions will remain secure and unchanged”.

The timing of the sale may well be opportune coming as it does off the back of the resort’s revenues almost doubling to €17.6 million in 2022, the latest year for which consolidated accounts have been filed. The company operating the estate, MJBE Investments 1 Ltd, returned to operating profit arising from those revenues to record an operating profit of €699,520, with the staging of the Irish Open playing a significant role in attracting business.

That operating profit followed a modest operating loss of €10,302 in 2021, when the venue also staged the 2021 Irish Open.

[ Mount Juliet narrows pretax losses amid Covid closures ]

The accounts show that the amount owed in bank loans at the end of 2022 totalled €13.65 million, while an additional €24.2 millon was owed in a shareholder loan.

Quite apart from highlighting its return to profitability and its hosting of the Irish Open, the owners of Mount Juliet may also be hoping to capitalise on the positive publicity surrounding the recent decision of the European Central Bank to host a meeting of its 26-member governing council there in May.

Contacted for comment, a spokeswoman for the owners of Mount Juliet confirmed they had appointed JLL to explore the sale of the estate at a guide price of €45 million. The spokeswoman said the decision had been made following “a number of recent unsolicited approaches” for the property.

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