Unibail-Rodamco, Europe's largest publicly traded property group, saw recurring profit rise 4.3% to EUR 453 mln in the first half of 2012, from EUR 435 mln a year before.
Unibail-Rodamco, Europe's largest publicly traded property group, saw recurring profit rise 4.3% to EUR 453 mln in the first half of 2012, from EUR 435 mln a year before.
The Paris-based property owner reported higher-than-expected earnings per share of EUR 4.94, driven argely by strong rental income as well as a reduction in average funding costs. Unibail-Rodamco said it is confident of meeting its full-year 2012 earnings target of a 4% increase in recurrent EPS per share.
Rental income rose to EUR 661 mln in the first half from EUR 647 mln a year earlier.
The company, which in June agreed to buy a controlling stake in Germany's second-largest mall operator Management fuer Immobilien, expects to complete 20 projects with a gross leasable area of 300,000 m2 in the next 18 months. It has a committed pipeline of EUR 2.9 bn with a targeted yield on cost of 7.8%. Nearly half of its committed projects are retail brownfield developments, suggesting that development activity will further increase the share of 'jumbo' malls in the company portfolio.
Unibail-Rodamco's property values overall remained rather stable during the first part of the year, reflected in an adjusted Net Asset Value per share of EUR 130.70. The result stabilised despite a softening in office yields by 30 bps to 6.9%, which was offset by a 10 bps yield compression for the shopping centres, particularly in the large dominant category.
Shopping centres with over six million visitors a year saw a 4.2% increase in value while other malls remained broadly stable (+0.2% value increase). The office portfolio saw values decline 2.2% over the same period.
