Great Portland Estates posted NAV growth of 14% to £2.7bn in the six months to the end of September as the company enjoyed 6.5% rental growth across its portfolio.
The rise in rents helped produce a 15.5% increase in year-on-year profit to £24.3m, GPE said in its interim statement.
Rental growth was fuelled by a significant uplift in leasing activity. GPE reported that the first six months of the year saw almost as much activity as the total of 2014.
The highlight for the company was Facebook’s prelet of Rathbone Square, W1, at a rent of £16.9m pa.
The value of the firm’s development projects was up by 18.3%.
Some 53.5% of projects were prelet or presold across nine schemes. GPE said it was making “good progress” on two nearly complete schemes.
A further 12 schemes were in the pipeline and due to start in 2018, the firm said.
Toby Courtauld, GPE’s chief executive, said these schemes were “geared for the next cycle”. The earliest of the schemes would complete in 2020, he said.
Courtauld said GPE remained net sellers of assets in the current cycle but was willing to look at “accretive” acquisitions such as taking full ownership of City Tower and City Place House, EC2.
