Primary Recommendations

Hollywood Bowl - EV / EBITDA of 4.5x too low given tremendous Canada opportunity

February 2026

Investing in shares may lose you all or some of your money. Past performance is no indication of future performance. Some of the shares recommended here may be small company shares, which can be relatively illiquid and hard to trade and this makes such shares more risky than other investments.

It’s always a delight to interview the management of Hollywood Bowl, the remaining London quoted operator of ten pin bowling sites in the UK and Canada, which has a track record of excellence. CFO Laurence Keen, who I again met with over the month, has overseen expansion in turnover and EBITDA profit from £107m and £29.2m at IPO in FY16 to £251m and £91.2m, respectively, in FY25, growth of 135% and 212% over nine years. Net debt at its float was almost £21m but has swung to net cash of £15.2m. True, that was aided by a Covid share placing raising almost £11m (5% more shares) but it’s sufficiently cash generative to have expanded the estate from 54 sites on listing to the present 92 while also returning the equivalent of 54p in dividends ...

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Hollywood Bowl - Six directors buy shares! (September 2025)

Hollywood Bowl (June 2025)

Hollywood Bowl - Record number of openings planned (March 2025)

Hollywood Bowl - Broker price target 440p (August 2024)

Hollywood Bowl (June 2024)

Hollywood Bowl - Forecasts inch higher (February 2024)

Hollywood Bowl - Trading ahead of expectations; analysts upgrade (December 2023)

Hollywood Bowl - Exciting second leg in Canada (August 2023)

Hollywood Bowl - EBITDA 12% ahead of forecast (February 2023)

Hollywood Bowl (November 2022)

Hollywood Bowl (July 2022)

Hollywood Bowl - Like-for-like sales growth: +26.8% (May 2022)

Hollywood Bowl - Ten-pin bowling group accelerates rate of openings (March 2022)

Hollywood Bowl (July 2020)

Hollywood Bowl (June 2020)

Hollywood Bowl (May 2020)

Hollywood Bowl - Shares smash through Â£3 mark (February 2020)

Hollywood Bowl (November 2019)

Hollywood Bowl (August 2019)

Hollywood Bowl - â€˜Upside forecast riskâ€™ is building for ten pin bowling operator (June 2019)

Hollywood Bowl - Special dividend cheers investors (February 2019)

Hollywood Bowl (December 2018)

Hollywood Bowl (July 2018)

Hollywood Bowl - Bowling operator enjoys high returns on capital (June 2018)

With small companies there is an above average degree of risk compared to buying blue chips. Please be aware that we have not assessed the suitability of any of these investments for you. The newsletter simply states a personal view and diarises the editor’s investment decisions. Please speak to your stockbroker or other qualified individual to ascertain whether any of these companies mentioned would form useful additions to your own portfolios. Past performance is no indication of future success.

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