Tag: Atom

Vivenio, Millenium & Atom Invested €543M in New Purchases in 2019

9 January 2020 – Eje Prime

Vivenio and the hotel Socimis drove the MAB in 2019. The Socimi controlled by Renta Corporación, plus Millenium Hoteles and Atom Hoteles together invested €543 million in new acquisitions during 2019. That figure accounted for 71.2% of all the funds spent on asset purchases by the MAB’s Socimis during the year.

Specifically, Vivenio invested €234 million, including €75.5 million on some of the Operación Calderón plots; Millenium closed 3 operations amounting to €192.4 million, including the purchase of 2 buildings in central Madrid which it is going to convert into a 5-star hotel; and Atom Hoteles spent €116.6 million on 5 hotels in Madrid, A Coruña, Cádiz, Tenerife and Gran Canaria.

In total, all of the Socimis on the MAB spent €762.1 million on the purchase of assets during 2019, up by 34.1% compared to 2018.

Original story: Eje Prime (by Marc Vidal Ordeig)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Bankinter’s Socimi Atom Buys Hotel Meliá Valencia for €42.3M

23 May 2019 – Levante EMV

Bankinter’s Socimi Atom has purchased the Hotel Meliá Valencia on Avenida Cortes Valencianas from the company Colony Capital for €42.3 million, according to sources close to the operation.

Colony Capital acquired the 117-metre tall property last year when it purchased the fund Continental Property Investments (CPI). In turn, Continental Property bought the building, which was operated under the Hilton brand originally, in January 2011.

Original story: Levante EMV (by Ramón Ferrando)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Meliá Earned 13% More in 2018 but its Revenues Fell by 1.5%

1 March 2019 – Expansión

Meliá ended the year with a slight decrease in revenues (1.5%) to €1.83 billion, which it blamed on a deceleration in the tourism sector. Nevertheless, its net profits rose by 13% to €140 million.

The decrease in revenues was due above all to the impact of the devaluation of the US dollar in the America region during the first quarter of the year – one of the most important for the company in the region – and the closure of several hotels for renovation in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. There was also a slow down in the Mediterranean and Cuba.

Despite the slow down in turnover, the company’s EBITDA increased by 7% to €326 million, following the sale of three hotels to the Socimi Atom in the summer and due to an appreciation in the value of its assets. Excluding those gains, Meliá’s EBITDA in the period increased by 0.9% to €307 million (…).

Looking ahead to 2019, Meliá is cautious regarding the evolution of the markets in America and the Canary Islands, but, by contrast, is optimistic about the markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), where it expects RevPAR growth of low to average digits, primarily due to the strong outlook in Continental Europe, as well as in Spain. Specifically, it forecasts a recovery in Barcelona, Madrid and Sevilla.

Original story: Expansión (by R.A)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Bankinter’s Socimi Negotiates the Purchase of Hotel Meliá Valencia

18 February 2019 – Expansión

Atom wants to strengthen its portfolio with the acquisition of one of the main hotels in Valencia for €50 million.

Bankinter’s hotel Socimi, Atom, wants to strengthen its portfolio and add the Meliá Valencia (formerly the Hilton Valencia) to its list of assets. The property is one of the main hotels in the city, located on Avenida de las Cortes Valencianas, close to the Palacio de Congresos.

Atom, which made its debut on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) in November, is holding negotiations with the fund Colony to purchase the 4-star hotel for around €50 million, according to explanations provided by market sources speaking to Expansión. Those same sources state that, although the negotiations are in an advanced stage, no agreement has yet been reached between the parties.

History

The hotel, located in a tower standing more than 110m tall, was officially inaugurated in February 2008 and has had several owners since then. The establishment, which has around 300 rooms and 21 meeting rooms, with the capacity to host up to 875 people, is managed by Meliá.

Colony purchased this asset along with some other Spanish hotels just a year ago from the investor group Continental Property Investment, controlled by the Lebanese businessman Boutros El-Khouri (…).

With this operation, Atom would increase its portfolio, which currently comprises 21 hotels and 5,232 rooms, with a gross value of €485 million. 82% of the hotels in its portfolio are 4-star properties and 60% are holiday establishments (…).

Original story: Expansión (by R. Arroyo, R. Sampedro & A.C. Álvarez)

Translation: Carmel Drake

B&B Sells another Hotel in Spain to the fund Corum for €6.6M

22 January 2019 – Expansión

The French hotel chain B&B Hotels – owned by the fund PAI Partners – has sold a hotel in Viladecans (Barcelona) to the French fund Corum for €6.6 million. It is the chain’s largest hotel in Spain, with 216 rooms.

This operation follows the sale of eight hotels that the company completed last year, also to Corum. Like it did then, B&B is going to continue operating the latest asset under a rental arrangement for at least 15 years. Following the sale, B&B owns just two hotels in Spain, in Oviedo and Barcelona (…).

B&B now operates 30 establishments in Spain and plans to continue growing its portfolio in the country during 2019. Its hotels in the country are owned by funds, Socimis and family offices, such as Corum, Atom, Covivo, Doalca and Azata.

Original story: Expansión (by R.A.)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Atom Makes its MAB Debut with a Stable Share Price

27 November 2018 – Eje Prime

Atom completed its first day on the MAB without any variation in its share price. The Socimi specialising in the hotel sector and owned by Bankinter made its debut on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) with no variation in its debut price of €10.70 per share.

That is the amount that the company set for its stock market debut and which values the company at €264.76 million. The Socimi started the day with a slight rise of 0.9%, to reach €10.80 per share, but ended trading flat.

Atom operates on the stock market with the code YAT and its shares are traded through the fixing system, whereby prices are fixed twice a day, a 12 noon and 4pm.

Atom owns 23 hotels with a total accounting value of €439.7 million, including the AC Marriott in Palma, Sevilla and Álava, as well as the Meliá hotels in Sevilla and the Canary Islands. The group is the 20th company to join the MAB in 2018 and the 67th Socimi to debut on the Spanish stock market to date: 62 Socimis operate on the MAB and five operate on the main stock market.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Bankinter’s Hotel Socimi Atom will Make its MAB Debut with a Valuation of €265.7M

21 November 2018 – Eje Prime

Atom is lining up to make its debut on the stock market. Bankinter’s hotel Socimi will ring the bell soon on the Alternative Investment Market (MAB) with a portfolio comprising 21 assets located all over Spain. The company will make its debut with a valuation of €265.7 million and a share price of €10.60 after the stock market regulator issued a favourable report for its inclusion on the alternative market, scheduled for before the end of the year.

Atom’s main partner is the Melià Group, which operates six of its establishments. In addition, the Socimi has agreements with AC Hotel by Marriott, Eurostars, Ibersol and B&B, amongst other chains.

Twelve of the company’s hotels are vacation properties, and the remaining nine are urban assets; most are four-star establishments. The properties are worth €483.5 million altogether, according to an independent valuation of the portfolio carried out by EY.

In addition to Bankinter, which owns 5.3% of the shares, other shareholders of the management company include Alcor, which controls 5% of the shares; Mistral Iberia Real Estate, with 5.15%; and Línea Directa Aseguradora, with 2%.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Bankinter Creates a Fund to Invest €400M in Student Halls

19 November 2018 – Real Estate Press

Bankinter has launched a venture capital fund that is going to invest €400 million in the promotion of student halls in the main university cities across Spain and Portugal. The fund is called ‘Fondo V Student Iberia’ and is going to be managed by Plenium Partners. To date, it has acquired a plot in Granada and it plans to buy more land in Valencia and Porto.

The fund has an initial capital fund of €150 million, and although it was created with the idea of giving the option for the entity’s private banking clients to invest upwards of €200,000, Bankinter itself has contributed €10 million. In addition, the US real estate manager Valeo – which owns more than 75,000 beds in student halls and nursing homes, primarily in the USA, contributed another €4 million and Plenium Partners, €1.5 million.

From there, “Fondo V Student Iberia” established its main hypotheses, which include the construction within a period of 2 years and the launch and operation a year later of at least four university residences containing 2,500 beds in total, in which it is going to invest up to €200 million.

With that objective in mind, it has already carried out its first acquisition, the purchase of a plot of land in Granada for which it has paid €8.8 million. It calculates that it is going to invest €41.3 million in total to build a 5-storey student residence containing 519 beds there, which will open its doors in September 2020.

Moreover, it is negotiating other alternatives to grow to almost 2,500 beds in the near future and has identified different opportunities to expand its portfolio to 9,000 beds.

The group is seeking to expand initially in the Iberian market, through the development, construction, execution and management of residential assets for students, primarily in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, Sevilla, Málaga, Lisbon and Porto.

The aim is to constitute a portfolio of assets that generate “predictable and recurrent” annual income in the hands of managing partners with proven experience, explains the document.

In this way, Bankinter is continuing its strategy of investing in alternative funds, after launching Helia, a venture capital fund that invests in renewable energy, and launching onto the market the Socimis Ores with commercial properties and Atom with hotels.

But now, it has placed its focus on university residences because Spain has 1.6 million students in total, close to the historical maximum, and also because it is one of the main destinations for international university students (and the top destination for those participating in Erasmus).

It is considered to be a sector with stable and growing demand; and it is estimated that between approximately 400,000 and 470,000 students are looking for accommodation. Moreover, a potential increase is expected in the student population in Spain and of Asian students, especially from China and India, where they have a lower presence than in other European countries such as Italy, Germany and France.

All of this will help the internationalisation strategy of the Spanish universities and the aim of obtaining value from the fact that Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world, with 400 million speakers.

Original story: Real Estate Press

Translation: Carmel Drake

Atom Socimi to Go Public With Assets of More than €500 Million

7 August 2018

The Atom socimi, founded by Bankinter, offers the bank’s private banking clients an alternative for investing in the hotel sector. 

Atom announced its IPO in January and now owns 23 hotels with more than 5,200 rooms, managed by chains such as Meliá and Marriott. 

The investment vehicle devised by Bankinter has a 7-year investment horizon, to be followed by disinvestment, though the bank is permitted to extend it

Bankinter will take its socimi public, a listed real estate investment company that has already acquired 23 4- and 5-star hotels spread over Spain. The hotels and their 5,200 rooms are managed by Meliá Hotels International and Marriott International, among others, and are valued at more than 500 million euros. At the end of 2017, the bank began offering its private banking customers the possibility of investing in the socimi, which was dubbed Atom Hotels and constituted on January 5, 2018. Atom was created to acquire a portfolio of hotels for long-term leasing, as Hosteltur tourism news reported late last year.

On February 2, the socimi finalised a capital increase through which it reached a total funding level of €247.8 million and, after that, began acquiring hotels after having analysed a significant number of possible market operations, investing almost all of its available capital. In July, it became known that Meliá had sold the Meliá Sevilla, Sol La Palma and Sol Jandía Mar hotels, in the provinces of Seville, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas, to Atom, while maintaining a contract to manage the properties.

Just a few weeks ago, the socimi signed a syndicated 5-year, 191-million-euro mortgage loan, through which it obtained the necessary financial resources to complete its planned investments and reach a total of 23 hotels in its portfolio.

The portfolio is “well diversified” by asset type, location and operator, with fixed rents of 78%, rental contracts with an average required compliance of 10 years and minimal needed investment as most of the hotels have already been renovated or are in the last stages of renovation, sources said.

The bank intends that the portfolio of hotels should offer the socimi’s shareholders an annual dividend of close to 5%. The socimi is expected to be listed on the MAB, Madrid’s Alternative Stock Market.

Atom’s main shareholders are Bankinter’s private banking clients, with a minimum investment of 200,000 euros and a maximum ceiling of 15% of their financial assets.

Other investors, including Bankinter, the socimi’s manager, GMA, and institutional investors, also have investments of at least €60 million.

The bank led by María Dolores Dancausa allocated roughly 18 million euros while GMA invested another €9 million, so both have sufficient minority stakes in socimi to be represented on its board of directors. Unlike other socimis, Bankinter’s investment vehicle has a disinvestment term of 7 years, although the bank reserves the possibility of extending it.

This is not the first socimi launched by the financial institution. In February 2017, Bankinter launched Ores together with Sonae Sierra, which invests in commercial assets such in Spain and Portugal. Socimis and investment funds have served to boost the sale of hotel portfolios, a report by the Hotel division of Colliers International stated. In the year to June, Spain saw the second largest amount of investments in the country’s history, 1.83 billion euros, down 13% from 2017. Socimis and investment funds played an important role in the feat.

Original Story: Hosteltur

Translation: Richard Turner

Grupo Hotusa Buys Hotel Eurostars Gran Valencia from Atitlán

15 June 2018 – Expansión

Grupo Hotusa is continuing to increase its portfolio of assets under ownership. The corporation chaired by Amancio López Seijas has purchased the Hotel Eurostars Gran Valencia, which the company has been managing through its hotel chain Eurostars.

The investment firm Atitlán – led by Aritza Rodero and Roberto Centeno, son-in-law of the owner of Mercadona, Juan Roig – was the owner of 66% of the hotel, according to explanations from market sources speaking to Expansión.

The hotel, located in the upper part of Torre Ademuz, has 110 rooms and a 4-star rating. Specifically, the Eurostars Gran Valencia occupies the upper floors of the building located on Avenida de las Cortes in Valencia, between the Palacio de Congresos and the future Nou Mestalla stadium.

Horwath HTL has advised the sales process, which began last year and which has been delayed for months due to the complexity involved.

Other purchases

In addition to the Hotel Eurostars, the building houses two hotels owned by Ilunion, which used to be managed by Accor, as well as a gym and a parking lot.

With this operation, Grupo Hotusa is taking another step in the framework of its expansion and purchasing plan, which extends both nationally and internationally. In this way, in May, Hotusa purchased Hotel Barceló Thalasso, located in Estepona (Málaga) from Sabadell and in March, it acquired the hotels Eurostars Gran Hotel La Toja and Eurostar Isla de la Toja in O Grove, Pontevedra, from Banco Popular.

The hotel consortium created in Barcelona in 1977 closed last year with a turnover of €1.24 billion, up by 15%.

The Eurostars Hotels chain, created by Grupo Hotusa in 2005, has around 100 establishments in large Spanish capitals and other international destinations such as New York, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Naples and Venice. Moreover, the group owns more than 50 hotels through its Exe Hotels chain.

Meanwhile, Atitlán is continuing with the divestment of its hotel properties with this operation. In this vein, a few months ago, it sold a portfolio of six establishments to Atom, the Socimi promoted by Bankinter (…).

Original story: Expansión (by R. Arroyo & A. C. Álvarez)

Translation: Carmel Drake