Austria’s Immofinanz has beefed up its war chest through a €312m rights issue to existing shareholders. The money will be used to finance a series of acquisitions, said chairman Karl Petrikovics.
He said the capital hike was needed to keep the company’s equity ratio at 65% during the buying spree. The acquisitions will boost the company’s portfolio, which contains mostly direct property, by around €500m to €2.5bn.
One of the acquisitions financed by the capital raising is Iride business Park in Bucharest, Rumania, which Immofinanz bought for €63m. The office and storage complex is fully let to tenants including Raiffeisen Bank, Procter & Gamble, Wella and Xerox.
Immofinanz is also bidding in a consortium for a portfolio of state-owned residential properties in Vienna. Petrikovics declined to discuss further details as the deal was still pending.
If this deal does not go through, Petrikovics said he has a number of alternative projects up his sleeve. Immofinanz is also interested in buying more German commercial property, especially in Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg, he said. Here, the company is in exploratory talks.
In the rights issue, each Immofinanz shareholder was offered one new share for every four shares held. The shares were priced at €6.20, around 1.6% below the price the company was trading at on 18 May.
The capital hike will increase Immofinanz’s equity from €1bn to €1.3bn. The new shares start trading on the Vienna stock exchange on 28 May.
