Dubai's Five Hotels Publishes Financial Results for First Time

The holding company of one of UAE’s best-known local hotel groups, FIVE Holdings, publicly shared its financial results recently – notable because large companies rarely release financial information unless they trade publicly.

FIVE Holdings declined to comment when asked by Skift whether it was considering an IPO.

FIVE shared the results on its website, and here are some of the key numbers:  

• Profit: 186 million dirhams in the first half of 2023 (approximately $51 million), up 43% compared to the first half of 2022.
• Revenue: Up 33% to 808 million dirhams ($220 million).
• Its hospitality business, measured in room revenue and F&B revenue, brought in 463 million dirhams ($126 million).
• The company makes the rest of its money through its property, real estate development and music label business subsidiaries.
• While the group's 2021 and 2022 figures are audited, these figures for the first half of 2023 are not.

FIVE Holdings has three hotels: Its original FIVE Palm Jumeirah; FIVE JVC also in Dubai; and FIVE Zurich, which is a reflagged property it opened last year.

The group has a fourth hotel in development, FIVE LUXE, also in Dubai, planned to open before the end of the year. FIVE assigned these properties a "fair value" of 7.16 billion dirhams (approximately $1.95 billion).

The group also has a private jet that its chairman uses and charters to guests in a venture called FLY FIVE, which is not mentioned in the report.

FIVE Holdings and Pacha

The financial release also confirms an acquisition FIVE executives have been quiet about. Spanish media outlets reported in July that FIVE Holdings was in the process of snapping up part of the country’s entertainment firm, Pacha Group.

The documents say the acquisition is underway “subject to fulfillment of certain conditions," including regulatory approval.

Should the deal be completed, FIVE will acquire two of Pacha’s existing hotels – Destino and El Hotel Pacha – and the Pacha nightlife business from existing owners, Trilantic Capital Partners.

The deal is reported to cost FIVE 320 million euros (approximately $350 million), according to Diario de Ibiza.

FIVE Holdings intends to split Pacha in two and put one half within the holding company, while original owners Trilantic keep the other portion.

This new business already has a name: Pacha Universe Holding Limited, listed as one of FIVE Holdings’ subsidiaries in its financial report. The company has also already been registered in the Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), listing its directors as FIVE Holdings chairman Kabir Mulchandani, along with Aloki Batra and Jaydeep Anand who are CEO and CFO of Mulchandani’s company respectively.

Trilantic – owners since 2017 through a €350 million sale – remains in charge of Pacha’s other nightclub brand Lio. To complicate the deal further, a Lio nightclub will open in FIVE LUXE this year, rather than a Pacha nightclub.