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5. Bull, Bear & Beyond – The London Tunnels: executive interview
8 Plays1 year ago
The London Tunnels owns the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels in Central London and is aiming to develop a major heritage and cultural attraction, targeting full commercial launch in 2027. The company is listed on the Euronext Amsterdam.
In our first interview with The London Tunnels, Charles Nelson, independent non-executive director, introduces the company and explores the fascinating history of the tunnels. Constructed during the Blitz in World War 2, the tunnels housed the Special Operations Executive and are considered to be the inspiration for James Bond’s ‘Q Branch’. Later, they were a crucial secret government communications centre during the Cold War. Charles outlines the company’s plans to develop the site into a major tourist attraction and points to comparable attractions in London for potential financials of the business. He concludes by highlighting the next key milestones investors should look for.
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About ‘Bull, Bear & Beyond’
'Bull, Bear & Beyond': features candid conversations with senior executives and from our own team of experts from across industries, exploring strategy, innovation, and the opportunities shaping their markets.
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Transcript
Introduction to Key Figures and London Tunnels PLC
00:00:07
Speaker
Hi, I'm Milo Buttle, a consumer analyst here at Edison Group, and today I'm joined by Charles Nelson, a non-executive director at London Tunnels PLC. London Tunnels owns the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels and has exciting plans to turn them into a major tourist attraction in central London.
00:00:23
Speaker
The company listed on Euronex Amsterdam in June 2024 and has a market capitalisation of around £150 million. pounds Charles, thank you very much for joining me today.
00:00:33
Speaker
Thanks very much Milo, lovely to
Overview of the London Tunnels Project
00:00:35
Speaker
be here. So Charles, for those that may not be familiar with the London tunnels, could you start by introducing the project please? um Yes, I'll obviously introduce the the company and the project and the history of it because it's a fascinating venture that we're we're we're kind of going down that path on.
00:00:51
Speaker
um It is likely to be the last major um scale tourist attraction for history and heritage in London. And what I mean by large scale is up to three million visitors a year.
00:01:03
Speaker
um yeah The same kind of scale as say Madame Tussauds or the London Eye.
Tour Availability and Shareholder Priority
00:01:08
Speaker
um We are planning to renovate these tunnels to bring them back to a safe state where Londoners and millions the millions of visitors who visit London every year can come and have a look at um their their role in the war and also the uses that the tunnels had post-war as well and we're extremely excited about being able to have be in this position to develop that.
00:01:31
Speaker
um But before I go into the tunnel's history, what I would like to say is that um we we're encouraging people to come and see for themselves. We are running tours. There's very limited availability.
00:01:43
Speaker
um What we would encourage people to do, particularly if they're investors, and you can buy shares, as Milo said, it's listed on the Euronext and Absand, but you can buy shares via broker platforms like AJ Bell.
00:01:56
Speaker
and we will prioritise shareholders um but late October we're running some tours ah down to the tunnels and we would encourage everyone to get onto our website thelondontunnels.com and apply to come down um and come and see for yourself. It's an incredibly exciting opportunity.
00:02:14
Speaker
And it wouldd be great if you could tell the audience more about the history of the tunnels. Absolutely. So to give you a feel for the location, um they are left literally
Historical Significance of the Tunnels
00:02:23
Speaker
around the corner from here. They run underneath Hoburn, in fact, underneath the central line, two tunnels running parallel east to west.
00:02:31
Speaker
um They were built in the war. to house Londoners for the Blitz and in fact there were a series of tunnels which were ah built around London um for that purpose.
00:02:42
Speaker
um Interestingly these ones were never used because they were started in 1940 and finished in 1942 and by that time the Blitz had kind of dissipated um although I'm sure you're aware there was a lot of people who died from bombings from from from Nazi Germany over that period, something like 43,000. So they were seen as a very important um construction project for protecting Londoners.
00:03:08
Speaker
In total the tunnel network is around a ah ah mile long. That's the whole network of tunnels. But actually the two main tunnels run perpendicular to each other east-west. They're approximately the same size as a tube tunnel, each one about 400 metres long with interconnecting tunnels.
00:03:23
Speaker
And then there are four larger diameter but shorter perpendicular tunnels running off one of the tunnels. um In fact, to give you a feel for scale, you can run three double-decker buses side by side down down the the bigger tunnels. So it's an ah absolutely enormous scale project.
00:03:41
Speaker
And um when they were built in the war they were due to house up to 10,000 people at any one time on each tunnel having an intermediate level which are no longer there but an intermediate level to house Londoners.
00:03:55
Speaker
um They were built as I mentioned in between 1940 and 1942. They were never used because of the dissipation of of the the bombing by by Nazi Germany.
00:04:07
Speaker
um but ah were kind of seen as um important storage facilities for various other things. So ah after the blitzer dissipated there were many other kind of government departments which used used them.
00:04:22
Speaker
There were reserve war room as an example. Towards the end of the war they were passed on to SOE, Special Operations Executive, part of MI6, everyone's familiar with that. and at the time we believe that Ian Fleming was a naval liaison officer to SOE and would have seen these tunnels in use by SOE and they were specifically used for research and development so in fact they were Q branch and became Q branch so in the James Bond novels that's exactly what what you see.
Future Development Plans and Attractions
00:04:50
Speaker
After the war they were used for various purposes, in particular the Public Records Office had a ah lot of storage down there. they They put in 80,000 feet of shelving, 500 tons of documents which went all the way back to ah the doomsday period which had been brought um back from the provinces which are during the war, after the war, because during the war um they were obviously in danger of being being destroyed by by the bombing raids.
00:05:18
Speaker
And then more interestingly they got passed on to the GPO. And the GPO in those days was split between the mail part of it and also telecommunications exchanges.
00:05:30
Speaker
And they set up an exchange there and in the 50s built the four large perpendicular tunnels that I mentioned, which housed generating equipment exchange equipment, switches, etc. And during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 60s, it was the hotline between the US and the the Russian or the USSR governments, in particular Chris Trevon-Kennedy obviously talking down there. So a lot of really interesting history.
00:05:57
Speaker
um They then passed on to BT who then have sold the tunnels to us, to to the to the company. And as you've probably read, it houses the deepest bar in the city.
00:06:09
Speaker
So very interesting prospect for anyone who's visiting the tunnels as we redevelop it. ah But we're really motivated to bring that heritage back to life. And we think that we're not only going to get a lot of interest from Londoners to come and see their history and their parents' history or their grandparents' history around the Blitz, but also foreign tourists who come in and they want to see what happened in in in in London over the over the war period.
00:06:40
Speaker
um And the other point um I would make is that it's not just going to be a history and heritage site, we're going cultural element to it as well. um So all in all, a very interesting prospect. And as I said before, we'd love people to come and see it for themselves. Please get onto the website and and apply for for a ticket.
Commercial Launch and Visitor Expectations
00:06:58
Speaker
The tunnels clearly have a fascinating heritage and I'm sure many investors would be keen to go and see them. So what are the plans you have to transform the tunnels? This has been a labour of love. So um for the last four or five years we've been preparing to get to that stage where we can actually get into construction and renovation.
00:07:16
Speaker
um We received full planning permission from um City of London Corporation in June this year, June 11th this year, and also from Camden Council in July this year.
00:07:28
Speaker
um So we're ready to go. so we've appointed some of the leading companies to help with the plans for this tourist attraction including architects like Wilkinson Eyre who will help us develop the tunnels to their former glory and including of course the bar, ah the deepest bar in London.
00:07:49
Speaker
This is not just a historical and heritage site, it's also going to be a cultural attraction. So what we're doing is we're looking at partnerships where um people and tourists can come down and visit an entertainment space.
00:08:04
Speaker
So yeah once you know along some of the tunnels you're going to have the history, that incredibly rich history around the war and in other parts of the tunnels you'll be able to be immersed in contemporary entertainment so it should be an incredible experience for people and they can pick and choose about which way they want to they want to go and that's one of the the real interesting parts about this whole project is that it shouldn't just be a one-stop um attraction we hope that people will come back time and time again to visit different types of entertainment as well as the history of of of the tunnels as well
00:08:38
Speaker
So you've signposted 2027 as the year for commercial launch. So what are the sort of expectations you have around visitor numbers, revenue and profitability by then? Yeah, so our our view, of our plan is that the project will open up for commercial operations 2027, maybe early 2028.
00:08:58
Speaker
maybe early two thousand and twenty eight um To give you a feel for um visitor numbers, um profitability, scale etc.
00:09:09
Speaker
um As I mentioned before, it's it's off similar it should be of similar size we think to London Eye or Madame Tussauds. We think up to our plan is up to 3 million visitors a year.
00:09:22
Speaker
um And when you think about ticket prices in London for these kind of attractions, um they're fairly standard, I would
Key Milestones and Public Engagement
00:09:30
Speaker
say. um So when you look at the potential profitability and revenues, it's going to be of that order that you would expect to have seen you expect to see from companies like London Eye and Madame Tussauds.
00:09:42
Speaker
So having recently received planning permission approval from Camden Council, what are the other key milestones that investors should be looking for? So we've obviously been announcing a lot of different things over the last few months, including the listing, including the the full planning permissions.
00:09:58
Speaker
We've got it on the website. You can see all of the development plans there. You can also go to the the planning portals as well. I think it would be logical to assume that the next stages would be around operation when we get to that stage of starting construction, who's going to operate it, how's it going to be operated and of course we'll be making announcements to the stock exchange in due course.
00:10:21
Speaker
I'd like to reite reiterate again that these tunnels being under development are really fascinating spaces in their own right. We would encourage people to get onto the website and apply to come down and see see for themselves because we think it's a fascinating
Conclusion and Acknowledgments
00:10:34
Speaker
experience. Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like a very interesting prospect for investors.
00:10:38
Speaker
Charles, thank you very much for joining today. Pleasure. Thanks, Milo.