CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 15, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Chanticleer Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:BURG) (“Chanticleer” or the “Company”), owner, operator, and franchisor of multiple nationally recognized restaurant brands, today announced that it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent for the acquisition of a highly complementary better burger brand with industry leading metrics. The target company has reported revenues of $10 million per year and historically demonstrated store level EBITDA of approximately 20%.

Fred Glick, Chanticleer Holdings President stated, “We are pleased to have entered into a letter of intent for the purchase of a highly complementary better burger brand. We believe this acquisition provides an opportunistic valuation and will be accretive to our existing portfolio and more importantly it geographically complements our existing portfolio in the Southeast United States with five new locations across multiple new local markets and other future sites already targeted.”

Glick continued, “We believe this acquisition will provide us with significant scale and help to define us as a more formidable player in the space. The platform that we’ve created over the last four months, facilitated with multiple new members of management, provides significant leverage by utilizing their talent and expertise to seamlessly integrate an acquisition like this without incremental cost.”

Acquisition Highlights:

• Expected to add significant scope to current operations of Chanticleer

• Post-acquisition, Chanticleer expects to be able to leverage target company’s strong EBITDA margins

• Allows Chanticleer to tap further into key markets of target company’s main operations including North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia
• Immediately adds five restaurants and generates significant geographic synergies related to customers, menu options and overall dining experience
• Provides the ability for Chanticleer to leverage target company’s human capital within core burger concepts

Chanticleer Holdings CEO Mike Pruitt stated, “While we continue to grow organically including having previously doubled our Little Big Burger store count to 20, up from just 8 when we acquired the brand, we’ve always kept our eyes open for additional accretive acquisition opportunities that would bolster our better burger portfolio of brands. With the recent additions of Fred, Patrick and Troy, we now have the management team and platform which we believe allows us to make a strategic acquisition like this one, allowing for expected seamless integration, increased scale, revenues, and relevance.”

Pruitt continued, “As noted on our year end conference call, we expect current and ongoing internal efforts have the potential to yield measurable results to our current portfolio’s performance. With that, we believe this transaction not only has the potential to complement our plan, but also help to accelerate it. Our goal remains the creation of shareholder value. It’s for that reason that our management team, board of directors and bankers all felt it to be in the best interest of our shareholders to aggressively pursue the transaction, in addition to initiating the process of corporate rebranding, including a name change to better align our brand name with our new core ideology.

“Lastly, we were equally pleased that the owners and management of the acquisition target also recognize the unique proposition afforded by our platform. After spending time with both Fred and I, we are glad they see the value in joining us as shareholders through a transaction that includes equity, therefore helping to align their goals with ours.”
Closing of the transaction is subject to usual and customary conditions for an acquisition of this nature.

About Chanticleer Holdings, Inc.

Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Chanticleer Holdings owns, operates, and franchises fast, casual, and full-service restaurant brands, including American Burger Company, BGR – Burgers Grilled Right, Little Big Burger, Just Fresh, and Hooters. For more information, please visit: www.chanticleerholdings.com.