Industrial property specialist Hansteen has set aside £8.7m in long-term incentive plan payments to its staff.
The non-cash charge to the profit and loss account represents a proportion of the estimated fair value of the shares that may be awarded next year under the LTIP.
In its half-year results the company, headed by joint chief executives Ian Watson and Morgan Jones, said that this had a 1p impact on its net asset value, which increased by 1p over the period to 103p per share.
During the period the company completed the landmark sale of its HPUT2 fund for £192.1m to Brockton and Dunedin. The sale price was £31.7m above the acquisition costs and capital expenditure carried out on the portfolio and the annualised return to investors was more than 27%. In total the company sold £213.6m of assets and bought £22.3m during the period.
The results also saw the company announce a dividend increase of 5.1% to 2.1p per share in November and net debt fall by five percentage points to 36.1%.
Chairman James Hambro said: “We believe that there is further such growth still to come, accelerated by the proven ability of our pan-European network of offices and people to maximise occupancy and value. Whilst the recent issues affecting the eurozone and the euro are unhelpful, our view is that once the immediate volatility calms down the longer term effect is likely to reinforce the ‘lower for longer’ financial environment. This should continue to fuel the current ‘search for yield’ by investors leading to further increases in liquidity and value in our sector.”
