Singaporean investor GLP has purchased a $4.5bn (£2.9bn) US logistics portfolio from Industrial Income Trust, making it the second largest owner and operator of American sheds.
GLP will inject the portfolio into its fund management platform upon closing in November.
It will then pare down its ownership stake to 10% by April 2016, with demand strong from institutional investors and capital partners to invest.
Representing a 5.6% cap rate, the purchase is funded by cash and existing credit facilities.
The portfolio comprises 58m sq ft across 20 markets, and was assembled through 100 separate transactions.
The largest markets include Los Angeles, Metro DC and Pennsylvania.
The portfolio was 93% leased as of 30 June 2015, with a weighted average lease expiry of nearly 5.5 years. GLP is focused on increasing the lease ratio to 95%.
It will enlarge GLP’s US footprint by 50% to 173m sq ft within a year of market entry, and take its global footprint to more than 500m sq ft.
GLP chief executive Ming Z Mei said: “This is an accretive opportunity for GLP that allows us to strengthen our US market presence and growth prospects with minimal incremental overhead. The fund management platform is one of GLP’s main sources of capital to fund our growth. The fund syndication offering for our first US income fund was significantly oversubscribed.”
