5th Feb 2019 08:06
LONDON (Alliance News) - St Modwen Properties PLC reported a "solid" annual performance on Tuesday, with strong progress made in repositioning its portfolio.
The urban regeneration company sold GBP529 million worth of assets during the 12 months to November 30. In the 18 months since announcing the strategy, it has sold GBP814 million of assets, some 40% of the portfolio at that time.
Almost half the retail portfolio has been sold for GBP177 million, less than 1% under book value.
EPRA net asset value per share at the end of St Modwen's year was 484.1 pence, from 471.2p a year before. Statutory net asset value per share increased to 470.4p at the end of 2018 from 450.9p.
Adjusted EPRA earnings for its financial year were GBP31.7 million from GBP29.4 million, while statutory profit rose slightly to GBP60.5 million from GBP60.1 million on the year.
The total accounting return, a "key" performance metric, was 6.0%, flat year-on-year.
See-through loan-to-value fell to 16.9% from 24.2%, while see-through net borrowing dipped 395 to GBP236.9 million.
St Modwen is paying a total dividend for the year of 7.1 pence per share, from 6.28p the year before.
Chief Executive Mark Allan commented: "2018 has been another positive year for us. With GBP529 million of disposals, we made substantial progress on our objective to focus our portfolio on sectors with the best structural growth prospects and reduce our borrowings, whilst we continued to grow housebuilding volumes and industrial and logistics development activity.
"Despite the ongoing uncertainty in the wider UK economy, structural growth drivers in these two key sectors remain positive, so following the significant repositioning over the past 18 months, we are now well placed to deliver a meaningful improvement in our return on capital and earnings in the coming years."
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