apollojetic wrote: BURLINGTON, ON, July 15, 2021 /CNW/ - SIR Royalty Income Fund (TSX: SRV.UN) (the "Fund") today announced that the Trustees of the Fund have approved the resumption of monthly unitholder distributions effective July 30, 2021. The initial monthly distribution under the resumption will be in the amount of $0.07 per Fund Unit and will payable on July 30, 2021 to unitholders of record on July 22, 2021 and will be funded by a combination of the royalty payment for SIR Corp.'s ("SIR") four-week operating period ended July 4, 2021, recent interest on the SIR Loan and a portion of the $1.0 million payment from SIR that was paid in April 2021 for previously deferred royalties and interest of the SIR Loan. The Fund also announced the appointment of William (Bill) Rogers as Chair of the Board of Trustees and reconstitutes its committees.
"With the continued easing of pandemic-related operating restrictions across Canada, we look forward to gradually returning to a more normalized operating environment as we welcome our guests back for in-restaurant dining at all of our locations, while continuing to adhere to strict health and safety protocols," said Peter Fowler, CEO of SIR Corp. "We are grateful for the support we have received from the Fund, our business partners and government programs throughout this difficult period. The pandemic has been the greatest challenge that SIR has faced and the Fund's unitholders have also been impacted. We thank the Fund's unitholders for their ongoing support and we look forward to ongoing unitholder distributions as SIR's operations continue to ramp up."
"The Fund Trustees will continue to monitor the Fund's distributable cash as sales of SIR and the resulting royalty payment increase as business restrictions on restaurants are reduced or removed, with a view to adjusting the level of unitholder distributions accordingly," said Bill Rogers, the newly-appointed Chair of the Fund. "We anticipate being able to increase distributions over time as revenues from the SIR restaurants recover, provided that restaurant dining rooms in Ontario are permitted to commence re-opening starting July 16, 2021 and remain open thereafter. The Fund expects that SIR will have repaid all previously deferred royalties and interest on the SIR Loan by July 6, 2022."
The Fund has appointed the following Trustees to its Audit Committee: Stephen Dewis (Chair), Michael Fisher and Norm Mayr. The following Trustees have been appointed to the Corporate Governance Committee of SIR GP Inc.: Sandra Levy (Chair), Lembit Janes and William Rogers.
SIR Corp. suspended dine-in operations beginning on March 16, 2020 at all of its restaurants and bars in accordance with the directives of public health authorities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the closure of SIR's dine-in operations, the Trustees of the Fund announced the suspension of unitholder distributions until further notice on March 23, 2020. Reduced services and restaurant closures resulted in material declines to sales at SIR restaurants throughout the pandemic. SIR was particularly impacted by the pandemic as the majority of its restaurants are located in the Greater Toronto Area, a jurisdiction that had some of the most prohibitive restaurant operating restrictions in North America.