Capital & Regional, the retail and leisure specialist, this week claimed “strong” institutional backing for expansion.
This was despite a slight decline in interim profits.
Chief executive Martin Barber said the group was looking to more joint ventures andco-ownership deals in thenext 12 months.
“There is no lack of private capital supporting what we want to do,” he said.
Barber said interim results showed a pretax profit ofÊ £4.8m, down £1.2m from the same period last year because of new accounting requirements.
Earnings per share on revenue activities, however, increased 56% from 3.4p to 5.3p.
Net asset per share was up 1p to 362p, and the dividend per share increased by 11% to 2.5p.
Barber said market sentiment was warming towards the group, with its shares rising 20% over the past year. He rejected claims that the group was a prime candidate for a management buyout.
“If there was a reason to go private, we would have. But we feel we have a strong role in the public sector and we are, and are going to, deliver a lot of our aspirations in the medium term.”
Ray Jones at HSBC said “Shopping centres remain out of favour with investors and, despite C&R’s good work, in terms of management and improvements, initial and equivalent yields are still moving higher.”
