7 May 2019 – Eje Prime
The company Byblos Costa del Sol, in which Ayco holds a 90% stake, has sold the Hotel Byblos Andaluz complex, located in the municipal district of Mijas (Málaga) to an unknown buyer for an undisclosed sum.
The complex includes the hotel building itself, plus a spa and a building housing sports facilities.
Original story: Eje Prime
Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake
31 August 2018 – El Economista
Last year, the Spanish-Swiss platform Stoneweg, led in Spain by Joaquín Castellví, launched its alternative financing division, to which it has already allocated €200 million to support the development of around 40 real estate projects.
The company headquartered in Geneva (Switzerland) has also raised another €100 million to finance new developments, in which it participates up to a maximum of 60 per cent of the debt.
With the creation of this new line of business, the firm was one of the first to enter the alternative financing market in Spain, a market in which the number of players is growing gradually.
The role that Stoneweg takes in the financing of projects is prior to that of the banks, given that the firm enters in the initial phase of developments, before there is a high level of pre-sales or when a project involves a plot of land that is not yet buildable. For that reason, its financing is more expensive than that offered by the banks, but it provides investors with the opportunity to enter more projects and whereby take full advantage of the upwards cycle currently underway.
Once the developments progress and achieve the parameters requested by the banks, the developers typically cancel the bridge financing in order to resort to traditional means.
In the case of Stoneweg, 50 per cent of the projects in which it has participated to date have been residential, whilst the other half have involved hotels and offices. One of the most significant alliances was closed at the end of last year with Ayco, which subscribed a financing line with an initial drawdown amount of €13 million.
Property developer role
This line of business comes in addition to the firm’s role as a direct investor in the real estate market, where the company has disbursed almost €700 million in recent years. In this way, the firm has starred in one of the largest ever operations in the office market in Barcelona, with the development and subsequent sale of the Luxa Complex in the 22@ district.
The company is continuing to look for opportunities in that segment, both in the Catalan capital and in Madrid, although, currently, housing accounts for the majority of its portfolio, given that it has around 2,000 units under development at different stages.
Through its residential firm Stoneweg Living, the platform has now handed over 150 units and in June, it finished its first development in Madrid, Alfonso X, located in the neighbourhood of Chamberí. Moreover, it recently started work on its first high-end development in the Maresme area of Barcelona, in which it is going to invest around €19 million.
Original story: El Economista (by Alba Brualla)
Translation: Carmel Drake
2 August 2018 – Eje Prime
Sevilla, the third largest Spanish city by population, is seeing the first signs of recovery in its residential market (…).
The capital of Andalucía, which is home to almost 690,000 inhabitants, has seen its population decrease on a gradual basis since 2012 when it exceeded 702,000 inhabitants. The slow but progressive decline of the population is probably one of the reasons why house prices have not risen there and why new builds account for an all but residual percentage of the market.
Nevertheless, some of the data does indicate that Sevilla is jumping on the bandwagon in terms of the improvements in the real estate market that are being seen across Spain: a sharp increase in prices in 2017, an on-going rise in sales and, finally, investment in the city by groups of the calibre of Habitat and Ayco.
The city of NO8DO, Sevilla’s traditional motto, saw its population peak at 710,000 inhabitants in 2003, before falling below the 700,000 threshold in 2007. That figure rose above 700,000 again in 2009 before reaching a decade high of 704,000 in 2010, but it has fallen continuously since then to the current figures.
Real estate dynamism
Despite that, the dynamism in terms of house purchases has been considerable in recent years. In 2013, operations in the sector were still registering strong decreases, with a fall that year of 24.4% to just 4,715 house sales. However, the rises have been unwavering since then: up by 12.1% in 2014; 11.3% in 2015; 15.1% in 2016 and 14.1% in 2017, with a total of 7,732 sales.
According to data from the Ministry of Development, during the first quarter of this year, 2,234 house sales were recorded in the city, of which more than 95% corresponded to second-hand homes. With just 98 sales, new homes accounted for just 4.4% of the residential activity during the first quarter.
Nevertheless, and despite this growing activity in terms of sales, residential prices in Sevilla remain stagnant. In recent years, average appraisal prices per square metre in the fourth quarter of each year have decreased steadily, with the exception of 2014 only, when they rose by a measly 0.3% (…).
Currently, house prices amount to €1,468.70/m2 on average (€1,754,40/m2 for new builds and €1,464/m2 for homes aged five years or more). That value is 26.3% lower than the prices in Sevilla in 2012 and 35.9% lower than the peaks of 2007, before the outbreak of the crisis, when the average house price amounted to €2,316.10/m2.
Governed by the socialist Juan Espadas since June 2015, the weight of social housing in the city is greater than that of many other Spanish cities, at least based on data for the first quarter of 2018. In this sense, 177 of the purchases recorded in the city between January and March involved social housing properties, which accounted for 7.9% of the total.
New projects
Habitat is one of the companies that has invested in the Sevillan market this year. In July, the property developer announced a €30 million investment in a new development in the Andalucían capital comprising 199 homes. The acquired land is located in Mairena del Aljarafe, one of the fastest growing areas in the local residential market (…).
Another active player in the city is Ayco, which has acquired a batch of buildable plots this year in the municipality of Camas (Sevilla). In total, that company has purchased land spanning 18,000 m2, where it plans to build around 200 homes.
Another emerging business for the city is the office market, which closed 2017 with 919,173 m2 of space leased, up by 4% YoY, and approaching the records of 2013, according to a report by the Sevilla-based consultancy Inerzia (…).
In the commercial sphere, the Torre Sevilla project is the most important in the city at the moment. Six years after inheriting this macro-project, CaixaBank has let 100% of the office space and the shopping centre is on the verge of opening its doors.
Aenor, Deloitte, Everis, Orange and the Chamber of Commerce are some of the entities present in the 18-storey office block, which account for just half of the skyscraper. The rest of the tower is occupied by a hotel managed by Eurostars, belonging to the Hotusa Group.
Original story: Eje Prime (by C. De Angelis)
Translation: Carmel Drake
30 January 2018 – Eje Prime
The property developer Ayco has acquired a batch of developable plots in the municipality of Camas (Sevilla). In total, the company has purchased 18,000 m2 of land, on which it plans to build around 200 homes.
According to the company, the acquisition of these plots is motivated by the strategic value of their location, just a few minutes from ‘Isla de la Cartuja’, one of the nerve centres of Sevilla’s business and administrative community.
Francisco García Beato, President of Ayco, has said that the property developer “wants to take advantage of the reactivation of the sector in Spain, and specifically in Sevilla, where there is a scenario of stable growth driven by the positive evolution of employment, as well as of other economic indicators”.
The Spanish property developer has launched a business plan, which forecasts investment of €200 million over the next five years, starting in 2018, when it plans to spend €80 million buying up land for the construction of around 1,000 homes.
Last December, Ayco announced its alliance with Stoneweg for an alternative line of financing amounting to €13 million to allow it to carry out purchases of residential assets in Spain.
Original story: Eje Prime
Translation: Carmel Drake
21 November 2017 – Expansión
The property developer Ayco plans to carry out a capital increase amounting to between €50 million and €100 million to allow new investors to acquire shares and to accelerate its business plan for the next few years. “We would like to carry out this capital increase, which has been authorised by the General Shareholders’ Meeting, at some point in 2018. For us, it will represent our definitive return to the market”, explained the firm’s President and CEO, Francisco García Beato.
Ayco is the oldest listed real estate company in Spain. The property developer, founded in 1941, with the name Inmobiliaria Alcázar and in which the Valencian businessman Onofre Miguel held a stake at the time, was one of the many victims of the real estate crisis that took hold in 2007. The property developer went on to complete a restructuring process, involving the transfer of some of its assets to Sareb at the end of 2014, and several months later, it welcomed the entry of new investors, including Alpha Moonlight, amongst others.
“After successfully completing the restructuring process, the company, which is currently listed on the “open outcry market”, is the ideal vehicle for investors looking for transparency, governance and to make their investments liquid through the stock market”, added García.
Ayco, which has own funds amounting to €8 million and a market capitalisation of €26 million, is currently working on a property development project in Palma de Mallorca, involving the construction of 24 homes on independent plots. It also owns a plot measuring 25,733 m2 between the municipalities of Gibraltar and La Línea de la Concepción, where it is building a four-star hotel with 250 rooms.
Hotel Byblos
In addition, last year, Ayco purchased Hotel Byblos (in Mijas), one of the most iconic establishments on the Costa del Sol in its heydey, for €9.75 million. This hotel, which has been closed for six years, used to be owned by the property developer Aifos, which filed for insolvency in 2009. Following a comprehensive renovation, the company plans to reopen the hotel – which will have 288 rooms, of which 65 will be newly built luxury suites – in the summer of 2019.
To this end, the firm is currently holding negotiations with hotel operators interested in participating in the project, from both a management and financing perspective. “Having a significant volume of resources tied up in a single asset has an opportunity cost. The ideal scenario would be for us to identify an operational and financial partner that would allow us to retain control and in turn participate in the generation of value for the project”.
García revealed that Ayco is negotiating with one international chain that does not currently have a presence in Spain and one Spanish hotel operator. In both cases, the partners work with real estate investors.
Ayco also owns land with a buildable surface area of 85,000 m2 in Málaga, Sevilla and Cádiz, where it plans to build around 800 homes. Moreover, it is evaluating operations to buy plots for the construction of another 1,000 homes in Andalucía, the Balearic Islands, Madrid and the north of Spain. Specifically, it plans to spend €15 million on the execution of those purchase opportunities.
The company will close 2017 with a turnover of around €5 million and a net profit of €500,000. It expects to generate earnings of €10 million in 2018 and of up to €24 million in 2022.
Original story: Expansión (by Rebeca Arroyo)
Translation: Carmel Drake
16 January 2017 – Málaga Hoy
Investors have set their sights on Málaga and are placing a special emphasis on the hotel sector, in light of the visitor and occupancy rate data being registered month after month there, both in the capital as well as along the rest of the Costa del Sol, with the consequent yields that they are generating.
These investors, which include domestic and international companies and funds spent €184 million on eight major hotel operations in the province last year, according to comments made on Thursday by Gonzalo Gutiérrez, Analyst in the Hotels Department at the consultancy firm Irea, in his presentation in Madrid of the Overview of the Hotel Investment Market in Spain in 2016. This amount is less than the €223 million registered in 2015, but Gutiérrez highlighted that all investment records were broken in Spain during 2015, which means that the volume recorded in 2016 “was very good”.
To calculate these figures, Irea includes the sale and purchase of hotels that already exist, as well as of buildings and land that are acquired for conversion into hotels. However, it does not include amounts relating to possible renovations performed at each establishment or for each project. Of the eight operations completed in the province in 2016, six involved the purchase of hotels already in operation and two involved the conversion into hotels of buildings that were previously used for other purposes.
Málaga capital accounted for half of those projects. The Hotel Tryp Málaga Alameda changed hands for the second time in less than a year. Merlin Properties, which recently purchased a portfolio containing several hotels in Spain, including the Malagan establishment, from Testa, sold the same package of hotels to the French investment fund Fonciére des Murs on 30 December, and communicated the sale officially on 2 January. Merlin sold 19 hotels in Spain to the French fund for €535 million. Gutiérrez also said that another hotel was sold in the capital but that he was unable to reveal the name or the amount paid for confidentiality reasons. Also in Málaga capital, the German group Activum purchased the Palacio del Marqués de la Sonora on Calle Granada to convert it into a hotel and another group acquired the building at number 10 on Calle Larios for the same purpose.
In the rest of the province, there were four other major hotel operations in 2016. The most talked about was the sale of the Hotel Byblos in Mijas, which was acquired by the Madrilenian group Ayco for €60 million. The plan is to renovate the property, open it again and restore the luxury tourism market that it used to serve decades ago. The Incosol, another iconic establishment, which had filed for bankruptcy, was acquired by a company owned by Banco Sabadell called HI Partners, for €20 million. Meanwhile, a domestic group purchased Hotel Las Palomas in Torremolinos; and Hotel Costa Park in Torremolinos, which has 388 rooms, was included in the package that Merlin sold to the French group.
Gutiérrez forecasts that 2017 will be positive given that “the Vincci Estrella del Mar was sold for more than €20 million and that other operations are being analysed, which will be closed this year”. The expert noted that Málaga is the fifth most attractive destination for hotel investors after Madrid, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands.
Original story: Málaga Hoy (by Ángel Recio)
Transltion: Carmel Drake
26 September 2016 – Real Estate Press
As a result of this operation, Hotel Byblos hopes to restore its reputation as a luxury establishment in the health and family tourism sector, focused on the world of golf.
Ayco’s representatives have communicated that the real estate group plans to completely rebuild the property, which houses one of the largest five-star luxury hotels on the Costa del Sol. They plan to retain the hotel’s characteristic features, as well as incorporate new elements, such as a health and beauty area.
The five-star Hotel Byblos Hotel is an icon of the tourism industry on the Costa del Sol, since many internationally famous personalities have passed through its facilities, including the mythical Rolling Stones and Lady Di, amongst many others.
The establishment, opened in 1986, achieved enormous international fame as an icon of high quality tourism until it was acquired by the real estate group Aifos, which then led it to ruin, until its closure on 31 May 2010. In 2009, the British magnate Lord Sugar, founder of the mythical information technology company Amstrad, acquired the hotel and considered the possibility of reopening it in 2013, but that did not end up happening.
Original story: Real Estate Press
Translation: Carmel Drake
26/08/2014 – Expansion
The property manager reduced its loss in the first half of 2014 by 16.5% to €2.85 million. At the same time, AYCO made €2.14 million and came to an agreement with Spain‘s bad bank, Sareb, on converting its loan into a participatory one. Thereby, the firm will dodge liquidation.
Original article: Expansión
Translation: AURA REE
The real estate group registered losses of 7,29 million Euros until the 30th September, 28% more than the ones registered last year. The company did not register any earnings as “it had not carried out any sale operations of registered stocks”. Ayco, who at the end of 2012 overcame its pre-bankruptcy situation and has become a Socimi, has a short term debt of 152 million Euros and continues negotiating the restructuring of credits with Sareb, that represent 67,9% of its financial liability.
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