Savor Limited is an NZX-listed hospitality group that runs restaurants and bars in Auckland, clustered on the Wynyard Quarter and Britomart waterfront, with outposts in Ponsonby, Parnell and Mission Bay. It is worth a profile because it is one of very few hospitality operators in the country that has to publish audited accounts, in a year when the sector is closing businesses faster than any other.
It started as a brewery
The listed company is older than the restaurants. It floated on the NZX in November 2012 as Moa Group, a craft brewer. Savor Group, the hospitality business established in 2011 and led by Lucien Law, was bought into it on 1 April 2019, a reverse listing that executive chair Paul Robinson describes in the company’s own materials as divesting “the historical loss making business”. By FY20 hospitality was 65 percent of revenue and, in the company’s words, over 100 percent of profit. In February 2021 the brewery was sold to a company associated with Moa’s chief executive and his family for about $1.9 million, Moa Group became Savor, and the ticker changed from MOA to SVR.
The history is still on the balance sheet. The company carries $59.8 million of share capital against $41.3 million of accumulated losses, and at mid-October’s share price of $0.185 the whole business was valued at about $14.2 million.
How it is built now
The portfolio is a set of distinct brands rather than one format repeated: Amano, Azabu in Ponsonby and Mission Bay, Ebisu, Bivacco, Non Solo Pizza, Ortolana, Auckland Fish Market and others. Exactly how many venues there are depends on which page you read. The results release says 18, the highlights page says 16, and the venue map lists 18 entries with two names appearing twice. The group had 445 employees at year end.
The audited results for the year to 31 March 2026, signed off by BDO:
| $000 | FY26 | FY25 |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 55,169 | 56,643 |
| Direct costs | (15,275) | (16,288) |
| Employee costs | (24,083) | (25,072) |
| Marketing | (429) | (579) |
| Utilities and operations | (5,166) | (5,215) |
| Other | (2,204) | (2,222) |
| Operating earnings (EBITDA) | 8,012 | 7,267 |
| Depreciation and amortisation | (4,405) | (4,732) |
| Restructuring and other | (488) | (2,514) |
| Interest | (1,344) | (1,465) |
| Tax | (489) | 232 |
| Net profit (loss) | 1,286 | (1,212) |
Revenue fell 2.6 percent, mostly because the group walked out of the multi-floor Seafarers building at the end of FY25, which cost it a $1.8 million loss on disposal that year. Operating earnings still rose 10.3 percent. Direct costs fell from 28.8 to 27.7 percent of revenue and employee costs from 44.3 to 43.7 percent. The venues themselves earned $10.6 million; a $2.6 million head office, 4.7 percent of revenue, takes it to $8.0 million.
The number
$4.3m
Savor's FY26 operating earnings of $8.0 million less the $3.7 million it paid on its leases, $2.97 million of principal and $0.75 million of interest. Lease accounting moves rent below the EBITDA line, so the record 14.5 percent margin is about 7.8 percent once rent is counted. (Savor audited annual report 2026, note 9 and cash flow statement, calculation ours)
What is worth copying
It grew profit without growing sales. The four-part venue discipline the group introduced in FY24, covering labour, cost of goods, overheads and procurement, is the whole story of FY26, and the board’s own explanation of the result is cost, not demand. In a year of falling discretionary spending that is the only lever most operators actually hold. The trading update to the end of July 2026 suggests it is still working: revenue up 5 percent on the prior year, operating earnings up 30 percent, and venue margin from 11 to 13 percent, according to the chair.
It is buying formats that need fewer staff per dollar. Flush Golf, a simulator golf bar opened at Britomart in September 2025, is the group’s first venue built around entertainment rather than food. The company says it supports stronger margins and lower variable labour than a comparable restaurant, and reports more than 5,000 bay bookings and 49,800 sessions in its first year, with members, weekly leagues and more than 110 group bookings filling it either side of the evening trade. A golf bay sells the same hour whether the kitchen is busy or not.
It makes suppliers fund the calendar. The Savor Food Festival runs for eight weeks across the group’s venues and was about halfway through at the end of September, in the quieter half of a business that the company says has historically made over 65 percent of its earnings in the summer months. The CEO told shareholders that drinks partners contributed over $130,000 to this year’s festival, so it fills tables in the shoulder months at very little cost to the group. The same logic runs through the balance sheet: drinks suppliers have advanced $1.6 million of loans in return for long-term supply contracts, released against purchases over the life of each contract.
It clusters. Most of the venues sit within walking distance of each other in two precincts, with a central depot doing the ordering. Next, the CEO told shareholders, is a pair of venues on the 2,000 square metre corner behind Bivacco in the Viaduct, an Amano bakery and deli and a new Japanese restaurant, targeted for spring 2027 and still in advanced negotiation at the end of September. Venues a short walk apart can share deliveries, managers and, eventually, staff on quiet shifts, which is one of the group’s stated goals.
Where the model runs out of road
The margin is flattered by the accounting. Under lease accounting, rent is not an operating cost, so EBITDA in a business that rents every site overstates what is left to run it. The $8.0 million of operating earnings becomes about $4.3 million after lease payments, and then has to cover $0.6 million of bank interest, tax and $2.5 million of capital spending. Savor is not hiding this, its own going-concern note talks about leverage “after rental costs”, but the record-margin headline is the version that travels.
The whole bank debt falls due inside a year. The $7.5 million term loan matures on 31 March 2027, so all of it now sits in current liabilities, and current liabilities exceed current assets by $15.4 million. The directors say refinancing talks with ANZ are under way and they expect it done by February 2027 at the latest. ANZ has agreed to a first dividend of 2 cents a share, about $1.5 million, in January 2027, but only once gross leverage reaches 1.5 times. It was 1.66 times at the end of July.
The growth plan has moved since the accounts were signed. In May the going-concern assessment rested partly on there being “no significant venue development planned” this year, with cash forecast to pass $4 million by December. In September the CEO told shareholders the Viaduct sites were in advanced negotiation and that hoardings were going up. No cost or deal terms have been disclosed. The CEO expects the two new venues to add over $6 million of revenue and take the corner to $17 million to $20 million, which would put roughly a third of group revenue on one block of waterfront.
Some of the numbers do not quite add up. The annual report says every 1 percent cut in the wage line is worth about $1 million to the bottom line. One percent of the $24.1 million employee bill is $241,000, and a percentage point of revenue is $552,000. Neither reaches $1 million. The report also promises in-house AI tools for rostering, forecasting and procurement, but these are pilots and designs, not results, and the accounts attribute no savings to them yet.
Being listed costs more than this company can comfortably carry. Net tangible assets are negative, minus 7.9 cents a share, because $20.8 million of goodwill and a $3.9 million tax asset outweigh equity. The board departs from three NZX governance recommendations, including an independent chair and majority-independent board, and explains this as cost. Directors halved their fees from October 2025, and an independent board review is deferred to save money. A $14 million company paying for a full listed-company apparatus is carrying overhead its private competitors do not.
What to take from it
If you run a hospitality or attraction business with good brands and thin margins, the lesson from Savor is that the margin you can control is worth more than the revenue you cannot. It cut cost of goods by about a point of revenue and employee costs by about half a point, kept its venues close together, and got suppliers to pay for the promotion that fills its quietest months. That turned a loss into a profit in a falling market.
The caution is to read your own numbers with rent in them. A record margin before rent can still be a modest business after it, and that is the margin that has to fund the next fit-out, the next refinancing and the first dividend. Savor’s case for the next year rests on all three landing at once.
Written from public sources: Savor Limited’s audited annual report for the year ended 31 March 2026 and its results release and NZX results announcement of 26 May 2026, read in full; the trading update of 3 March 2026; the chair’s and CEO’s addresses and presentation to the annual shareholders’ meeting of 29 September 2026; Moa Group’s NZX announcements of 19 February 2021 on the brewery sale and name change; the NZX company page for SVR; and the company’s own website. All arithmetic is ours and reconciles to the audited statements. Written without the operator’s involvement. The Shoulder Season has no commercial relationship with any business it covers, takes no payment for coverage, and gives no subject approval over what is published.
Operator profiles run every week or two, a different business each time. Written from public sources, with no involvement from the operator and no commercial relationship of any kind.