XP Factory Plc

And it's been a nightmare, absolutely.

Second biggest faller, XP Factory, down 16% this week.

Let's look at the energy share price for a second.

Is

Yeah, just dropped off a cliff due to that placing they did.

Nightmare, that is.

XP Factory, a bit of a surprise thing.

I know they were struggling, but they've decided this week to sell off their Boom Battle Bar.

Let's go to Experiential Leisure.

We've got Richard David asking about XP Factory.

I know we talked about this about three or four weeks ago.

It was before they sold-

Clearly they know the numbers, they know what needed to be done, and they've, they've hived off the, uh, the problem part of the business too, incidentally, back to its founders in a, a vehicle backed by Frasers.

So maybe they'll make a better job of, of running it than...

XP Factory was always so cash constrained that I think they've not been able to invest in the sites in the way that they, they needed to really, and to do the marketing that was needed.

So yeah, this one's, this one's basically off my radar now.

Moving on, and here is a kind of an example of a told you so, but I don't want to make it that.

Our friends at, uh, XP Factory, a couple of sound offs ago I was talking about how they'd gone to the market and they'd said that they'd seen ups and they'd seen downs.

They'd seen ups from their escape room business, which was quite positive, and they'd seen downs, uh, in the earnings from, uh, the recent acquisition, you know, back in, uh, what was it? Uh, 2021 when they acquired, uh, Boom Battle Bar.

Anyway, we wake up a couple of days ago just before, uh, the, the fighting started at the bar, uh, at IAAPA Europe, uh, and we hear that XP Factory has decided to divest themselves of Boom Battle Bar.

So they bought it, paid 17 million pounds for it, and they've just sold it for 11 million.

That's a loss in my books.

Well, FO, uh, 22, as you can see, I only have a standard block face, [laughs] uh, type for it because the company has no recognition factor.

They are, uh, actually includes the ex-founder of Boom Battle Bar inside it.

Let's go to experimental leisure.

We've got Gordon asking about XP Factory that owns Boom Battle Bars, which is struggling a bit, which you can do your axe throwing and your sort of like all kinds of shuffleboard and stuff like that in bars.

And then you've got Escape Hunt, I think, that does the sort of escape room sort of concept.

I think you mentioned they had a bid last year.

I can't, you know, that's never been confirmed or denied by the company.

I've always thought, I mean, the reason I originally bought these at about, I don't know, 11 or 12p, I think, or something is made a nice turn on them, so I'm not, you know, did pretty well, I was lucky.

It was because this would be an obvious bolt-on acquisition for one of the larger groups that could then, say, Wetherspoons bid for it, they could strip out a ton of central costs XP Factory, which management have always said the central costs are high because we built this to be a much bigger group.

So there's a lot of fat in the central costs.