26th Nov 2024 10:24
(Alliance News) - LondonMetric Property PLC on Tuesday upped its interim dividend per share as half-year EPRA earnings soared.
The London-based real estate investment trust said pretax profit more than doubled in the six months to September 30 to GBP165.9 million from GBP81.6 million the prior year, with revenue up on-year to GBP195.9 million from GBP77.2 million.
The FTSE 100-listed firm said this significant increase reflects improvements in EPRA earnings, coupled with a higher portfolio revaluation gain of GBP14.3 million.
EPRA earnings over the period multiplied to GBP135.4 million from GBP53.1 million a year before, with earnings growth driven by a significant on-year improvement in net rental income coupled with exceptionally low operating costs as well as including the full benefit of last year's merger activity.
Net rental income for the period increased to GBP193.1 million from GBP76.0 million the previous year.
In August last year the firm acquired CT Property Trust in an all-share deal worth GBP198.6 million and more recently, in March, LondonMetric completed a all-share merger with LXi REIT PLC valuing LXi at GBP1.9 billion.
LondonMetric said this corporate activity was "transformational, doubling the size of the portfolio". Year-on-year the firm's portfolio value increased by 94% to GBP6.2 billion from GBP3.2 billion. The company was promoted to the FTSE 100 index this past June as a result.
EPRA net tangible assets were GBP4.00b on September 30, up from GBP3.91 billion on March 31. This was 195.7 pence per share, up from 191.7p. IFRS net assets per share were 198.8p, up from 195.2 in March.
The firm declared an increased interim dividend of 19% to 5.7 pence per share compared with 4.8p the prior year.
LondonMetric Chief Executive Andrew Jones said: "Following the transformational LXi deal, we have further cemented our position as the UK's leading triple net real estate income investor.
"Our GBP6.2 billion portfolio is aligned to the strongest thematics of logistics, convenience, hospitality and healthcare, and is invested in mission critical real estate with high occupier contentment.
"Importantly, our transactional capabilities, greater scale and strong shareholder alignment is ensuring our portfolio is constantly re-shaping, with GBP234 million of lower growth disposals and GBP203 million of high quality acquisitions year to date.
"This activity along with further external growth and consolidation opportunities that are presenting themselves is supporting our target to grow our logistics exposure to 50% by year end."
Shares in LondonMetric were down 0.1% at 190.29p on Tuesday morning in London.
By Christopher Ward, Alliance News reporter
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