The former African gold miner taking on the billionaire Issa brothers
Roadside Real Estate has been along a weird and wonderful journey since it was first floated on the stock market.
The company began life as Sovereign Mines of Africa, hunting gold deposits in the farthest corners of the African continent. But in 2016 the firm had a change of heart and decided to sell its interests in a Guinean mining project to a Canadian rival, becoming a cash shell as a result.
What to do with the proceeds? The business had a go at buying an Indian spectacles manufacturer – an obvious next step – but the plans were abandoned after takeover talks fell apart.
Next, it acquired a Gloucestershire-based boutique pub and hotel chain before snapping up a used car dealership. After that, it picked up a small coffee shop chain and then (naturally) dipped its toe in the life sciences world by buying a sleep therapy biotech business. And then it bought 12 Lidl stores. And then some petrol stations.
You’d be forgiven for struggling to find a thread that weaves together this hodge-podge of acquisitions. But according to chief executive and largest shareholder Charles Dickson, whose own family made a small fortune from founding the Oldham-based Yates’s Wine Lodge chain in the 19th century, the firm is, at its core, a property company.
“I wouldn’t call it a family tradition, but I think I did learn a lot from my father who always said to me that Yates’s was fundamentally a property business. Roadside Real Estate is—well, it’s in the name—but we are fundamentally a property business,” Dickson tells City PM.
“We wanted to do something on AIM that gives investors an opportunity to own an operational real estate business that’s right in the thick of the energy transition that’s also [inheritance tax] qualifying. And that’s exactly what we’ve created.”
Since the pandemic, Dickson has sharpened the focus of the company. After changing its name from Sovereign Mines of Africa to Barkby Group, the firm began offloading some of its more peripheral investments. The Coffee shops went, it began selling down its stake in the biotech and – as Dickson shook off family nostalgia – the loss-making pub chain was discarded.
As of 2024, petrol stations have become the core focus of the business and the rebrand to Roadside Real Estate a reflection of this strategy pivot. That has been followed by a period of aggressive expansion.
We could become a very, very big company
In July last year, Roadside bought a former Sainsbury’s petrol station for £1.3m. Then on Christmas Eve it bought another six for £17.8m. In February it signed a deal to acquire a petrol station and fuel distribution operation for £11.9m, and in April this year, it bought another 12 forecourts for £28.6m.
Investors seem to like what they see. Since the beginning of 2024, the firm’s stock has grown eight-fold, eclipsing the £100m market cap mark for the first time late last year.
Tens of millions have been raised to fuel further acquisitions, and big-name hires have been made to the board, including Steve Carson, the former chief executive of furniture group SCS, and Jonathan Warburton, the boss of the eponymous family baker. Equity analysts have begun paying close attention.
A well-trodden path
“It’s an experienced management team they’ve brought in,” says Darren Shirley, analyst at Shore Capital.
“But also what they’re doing is a reasonably well-trodden path, I would suggest. This sort of buy-and-build and consolidation strategy in fuel forecourts has been done quite a lot over the last decade or two, to great success.”
Easily the best-known entrepreneurs who have walked the Roadside route are the Issa brothers, the Bolton duo who transformed a small forecourt business into a billion-dollar, multinational operation known as Eurogarages (now called EG Group). The pair are now planning a US IPO thought to value the company at as much as $9bn.
The brothers used their financial might to acquire Asda from Walmart in 2021, though the family’s stake in the supermarket has since been reduced – along with the sale of a number of other assets in the Eurogarages business – as the duo fought to keep a heavy debt burden under control.
But “if anything, the financial dynamics underpinning the [Roadside] strategy are even stronger now than they were when a lot of those businesses started,” Shirley says.
“It’s still a very fragmented market. Those owners are getting older, and are viewing things in terms of how they manage their own family finances amidst [inheritance] tax changes.”
Outside the top nine independent operators in the forecourt business, no one has more than 50 sites – and outside the top 30, none own more than 10 sites.
And Dickson has no plans to slow down his acquisition spree.
“We would like to get over 100 sites within the next couple of years –well over 100,” he says.
“I think we could easily get to 200 to 400 within five years. So we could become a very, very big company.”
The energy transition
But one thing stands in the way of Dickson achieving the billionaire status of the Issa brothers: EVs.
The UK’s transition to electric cars is gathering momentum. Chinese EV maker BYD sold just shy of 40,000 vehicles in the UK in the first half of 2026, a near-doubling on last year, while in March the electric Jaecoo 7 became Britain’s best-selling vehicle.
More EVs means fewer fuel-burning cars on the road and declining demand for petrol stations, as well as the huge capex cost of installing forecourt charging stations to plug the revenue shortfall, many of which require a grid connection that can take years to secure.
For his part though, Dickson is relaxed. He insists petrol and diesel cars are here to stay and says it will be at least a decade before Roadside invests seriously in electric charging infrastructure.
“If you actually model out the government’s own data…77 per cent of the cars on the road in 2035 will still be using petrol or diesel,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter who’s the Energy Secretary, whether it’s Ed Miliband or someone else, it’s going to take a long, long time.”