9th Mar 2015 07:40
LONDON (Alliance News) - Hansteen Holdings PLC Monday said its pretax profit doubled in 2014, as it sold properties into the buoyant UK property investment market, and it raised its dividend and announced a special dividend as it also gave a positive outlook.
The property investor reported a pretax profit of GBP131.2 million for 2014, up from GBP65.3 million, buoyed by the gains on property sales, while its normalised income profit, which excludes profits or losses from the sale of properties and therefore represents the repeatable income of the business, rose to GBP48.2 million, from GBP39.4 million in 2013.
"Further improvements in both the occupational and investor markets across all three of our core regions have enabled the business to produce another year of record results. We have sold a significant amount of property into a very buoyant UK investment market which has released capital and allowed Hansteen to make some noteworthy acquisitions. These acquisitions fit our business model perfectly having a high initial yield and a material vacant element," Chairman James Hambro said.
The company made GBP315.3 million of sales in 2014, making a total profit of GBP26.1 million over the December 31 valuation of the assets sold and GBP47.7 million over the gross acquisition costs. It bought GBP267.7 million of properties at an average yield of 9.8% and with a vacancy of 16.0%.
The property valuation across its portfolio stood at GBP135.8 million at the end of the year, up 9.2% on a year earlier, its like-for-like rent roll increased GBP1.7 million a year, while like-for-like occupancy rose by 195,000 square metres or 29.2% of the vacancy it had at the start of the year.
"Our portfolio still has a valuable vacant element to drive the rent roll and rents which look set to grow as the economies in which we operate improve. Risk adjusted returns from industrial property look high relative to many other investments and there is a significant weight of capital looking to invest," joint chief executives Ian Watson and Morgan Jones said.
Hansteen said it will pay a full-year dividend of 5.0 pence, up from 4.8p in 2013, reflecting the increased earnings, and will also pay a special dividend of 3.0p reflecting the profits it made on its property disposals.
Its diluted EPRA earnings per share rose to 5.2p in 2014, from 5.0p in 2013, while EPRA net asset value rose to 102p, from 91p.
By Steve McGrath; [email protected]; @stevemcgrath1
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