COVID-19 UPDATE March 19 2020

Dear Friends,

We have today announced a number of precautionary measures to protect our employees, licensees and the Company.

These include:

• The Board of Directors voluntarily agreeing to take a temporary 20% pay cut

• Cancelling the shareholder dividend

• Suspending rent receipts from March 16 to support our licensees

• Ceasing all non-contractual capital expenditure

• Minimising all expenditure to the lowest level possible

Events have moved extremely rapidly since the Government’s advice on Monday March 16th to the general public to “avoid pubs, theatres and other hospitality venues” in order to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

We had seen some volatility in trading towards the end of the last week but after the Government’s announcement, the hospitality industry’s situation has changed materially.

In light of these changed circumstances, we are now implementing a number of precautionary measures to protect our employees, licensees and the Company, which we will review on a weekly basis.

As announced earlier this week, we have already taken extensive measures to ensure the safety of our staff and customers. Starting today, all office staff have moved to home working. The brewery is continuing to produce beer under new and strict access and hygiene controls including deep cleans between shifts, workplace distancing measures and monitoring the temperature of employees at the beginning and end of each shift. The managed pub estate also has extensive precautionary measures in place to ensure hygiene best practice, and operational advice has been provided to the tenanted estate.

Please get in touch with us via our dedicated email address if you have any concerns: [email protected]