London-listed Sirius Real Estate is planning to raise up to €40m through a share placing to refinance existing facilities.
The owner of business parks, offices and industrial complexes across Germany is going to issue 167m new ordinary shares at 24c a share and use the proceeds – plus two new facilities – to repay loans of €149.4m to BerlinHyp and €31.3m to RBS.
It has agreed heads of terms with Macquarie Bank for a new facility for a minimum of €32.5m to refinance five of the RBS assets, three BerlinHyp assets and an unencumbered asset.
Secondly, it has agreed in principle a new five-year facility of €115m with a syndicate of two banks led by BerlinHyp and involving another German bank against nine of the remaining 11 assets within the current BerlinHyp facility.
The refinancing will allow Sirius next year to put up for sale two freshly unencumbered assets, plus another non-core asset.
It plans to invest cash raised from these sales, plus the excess proceeds of the equity raising – together estimated to be around €17.5m – into “new core opportunities and the capital expenditure programme”.
Following the capital raising, refinancings and the non-core asset disposals, Sirius will have 27 properties valued at €414.8m and debt facilities of €226.5m expiring between January 2017 and August 2023.
Alongside these proposals the firm has announced its interim results reporting a twofold increase in pretax profit, which came in at €6.9m at the end of September.
It said its gross annualised rent roll increased by 1% to €40.8m, and average rent per square metre increased to €4.44 from €4.42 in March.
Valuations increased by 1.9% and net asset value per share increased to 48.96c – up from 48.44c in March – despite the dilutive effect of 30.9m shares issued in August 2013
Chief executive Andrew Coombs said: “Trading during the first six months has continued positively, positioning the business to achieve a good result for the year. Today we also announce measures to refinance the company’s short term debt, strengthen the capital structure and position the business for growth.”
bridget.o’connell@estatesgazette.com
