Safestay (LON:SSTY) reported it has sold its Glasgow hostel, booking £5.1 million in cash. The money puts more weight on the thinly traded AIM tape. London, July 3, 2026, 14:10 BST
- Safestay said it wrapped up the sale of its Glasgow Charing Cross site freehold for £5.1 million on July 1.
- Shares traded at 15.00p on Google Finance at 13:39 BST, up 11.11%. Just 3 shares had changed hands and market cap was £9.74 million.
- The Glasgow payment is around 52% of the screen market value and comes to about 36% of Safestay’s 2025 bank debt.
- Safestay posted FY25 revenue of £20.6 million, down on the year. Adjusted EBITDA dropped to £3.7 million, while statutory loss per share came in at 15.48p.
Safestay Plc (LON:SSTY), the AIM hostel group, is delivering a cash-number story for holders, but there’s barely any volume on the tape. By 14:10 BST, London was trading as usual on Friday. The London Stock Exchange’s weekday hours are 8:00 to 16:30.
Price data here is tricky. Google Finance reported just 3 shares changing hands. Hargreaves Lansdown listed a 12p sell, 15p buy and only 2 shares of volume. That’s a 3p spread, which is wide on a 13.5p midpoint, even for a small cap.
Safestay said July 1 it wrapped up the Glasgow freehold sale to an independent investor for £5.1 million in cash, according to its latest filing. Proceeds are set for debt repayment, working capital and to help the balance sheet. The hostel is dropping the Safestay brand.
Google Finance, Hargreaves Lansdown and company filings show a wide valuation gap:
| Measure | Number | Investor read-through |
|---|---|---|
| Current screen market value | £9.74 mln at 15p | Glasgow deal is close to 52% |
| Previous-close market value | £8.77 mln at 13.5p | Glasgow deal is roughly 58% |
| FY25 bank debt | £14.1 mln | Deal covers around 36% of debt |
| FY25 cash | £2.7 mln | Deal is about 1.9x cash |
| FY25 NAV per share | 22.21p | 15p is around 32% under NAV |
This is key since Safestay is getting cash for a profitable owned site. The Glasgow hostel brought in about £1.5 million revenue and £0.4 million pre-tax profit in the 12 months to Dec. 31, 2025. The sale price was £5.1 million, just below the £5.2 million book value, but more than the group spent buying and refurbishing the property.
The 2025 accounts lay out why the market still isn’t giving full credit to the asset sale.
| Metric | 2025 | 2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | £20.6 mln | £23.0 mln | -10.5% |
| Adjusted EBITDA | £3.7 mln | £6.5 mln | -43% |
| Bed nights | 877,674 | 931,688 | -6% |
| Occupancy | 70.0% | 75.2% | -5.2 pts |
| Average bed rate | £20.06 | £21.43 | -6% |
| RevPAB | £16.43 | £18.56 | -11.5% |
| Bank debt | £14.1 mln | £19.5 mln | -28% |
| Lease liabilities | £27.0 mln | £23.7 mln | +14% |
Bank debt fell, but adjusted EBITDA fell harder. Finance costs ended up at £3.1 million, compared to £3.7 million of adjusted EBITDA. That doesn’t leave much headroom if trading turns. Lease liabilities climbed to £27.0 million, so fixed costs are still there even as the model stays asset-light.
Chairman Larry Lipman called it a “challenging pan-European trading environment” and mentioned a “pipeline of growth opportunities including franchising.” That’s the management talking. The market view is tougher: the 2025 statutory loss per share of 15.48p came in just above the 15p price listed on Google Finance. Investegate
Distribution has its own key metric. Safestay reported direct bookings made up 37.5% of sales—higher than the global rate of 26.3% listed in the company’s results. D-EDGE said in a July 1 report on hotels in Europe and Asia that direct bookings stayed the leading channel by value, and also offered stronger rates and better cancellation terms.
The decline in 2025 beds sold, rate and RevPAB continued. Forward bookings as of Jan. 1, 2026 were £3.1 million, dropping from £4.7 million a year earlier. Safestay said the average bed rate year-to-date was slightly higher, but occupancy took a hit from shifts in consumer behaviour and new tourist levies in some European cities.
Fidelity’s event list now shows Safestay’s next half-year numbers in September 2026, with the AGM coming up in August that year. Investors will be watching then to see if management has used the Glasgow funds to cut debt and if RevPAB is still sliding.
