Tag: capital reduction

Lar España Launches a €42M Share Buyback Program

25 March 2019 – Eje Prime

Lar España has launched a program to repurchase a maximum of 5% of the listed company’s share capital. The program will last for nine months and could amount to up to €42 million, according to the Socimi.

The aim of the capital reduction, which will involve 4.66 million shares is “to continue strengthening the return on investment for our shareholders”.

It is the second time that the Socimi has undertaken an operation of this kind. On 28 February, it completed its first program, which saw it repurchase 3.31% of its share capital.

Lar España owns 17 real estate assets with a combined value of €1.5 billion. Shopping centres account for the majority of those assets (€1.4 billion).

Original story: Eje Prime 

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake

Azora Postpones the Liquidation of its European RE Investment Fund

6 March 2018 – Expansión

Strategy / The manager is asking the shareholders of Azora Europa 1, including Sabadell, Bankia, Abanca, Manuel Jove and the President of Ebro Foods, Antonio Hernández Callejas, to extend the divestment period.

With renowned shareholders, the firm Azora Europa 1 has convened an Extraordinary General Shareholders’ Meeting on 21 March, where it is going to address a change of strategy. The company was created by the heads of Azora in 2005 with the aim of looking for real estate investment opportunities. Two years later, when the real estate bubble burst in Spain, the firm started its journey with investments from Sabadell, Bankia, Kutxabank and Abanca, the businessman Manuel Jove – President of the holding company Inveravante and founder of the real estate company Fadesa –, and the President of the listed company Ebro Foods, Antonio Hernández Callejas.

Azora Europa 1 chose Eastern Europe as its primary investment destination and rental properties as its main asset. Thus, between 2008 and 2015, Azora Europa undertook 10 real estate projects in Poland and another one in the Czech Republic. During that period, Azora’s fund closed its investor period with a total volume of €410 million, of which €140 million corresponded to own funds.

Ten years after its launch, its directors terminated the fund’s journey and requested authorisation from its shareholders to initiate the divestment process. Nevertheless, one year on, the company has taken a step back from that initial plan and is going to ask its investors to postpone its complete liquidation. The fund, which at its height accumulated a dozen properties, two for residential use and the rest for office use in Poland and the Czech Republic, has decided to divest the residential complexes and the Galerías Louvre in Prague, and exclusively hold onto its office portfolio in Poland. The reason given is the high returns offered by those assets, say sources at Azora. It is a portfolio leased almost in its entirety and which includes, amongst others, the headquarters of BNP Paribas Fortis in Krakow and the Harmony Office Centre in Warsaw, whose main tenant is Millennium Bank.

Now, the heads of Azora (the company that also manages the Socimi Hispania) are going to have to obtain approval from their shareholders, on 21 March, to extend the initial divestment period. At the meeting, the subject of a capital reduction will also be addressed, for a maximum amount of €6.16 million.

Valuation

According to the latest published accounts, Azora Europa 1’s real estate investments were worth €260.7 million as at December 2016, compared with €269.5 million a year earlier. In 2016, the fund recorded revenues of €30.6 million, of which €12.8 million proceeded from the sale of properties (compared with €1.8 million generated from the same concept a year earlier). In that year, Azora Europa 1 recorded losses of €3.73 million, primarily due to provisions recorded for the impairment of tax credits.

Original story: Expansión (by Rocío Ruiz)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Bouygues Relaunches Its RE Business In Spain

3 February 2017 – El Independiente

Bouygues, the French industrial giant that operates in the construction, public works and telecommunications sectors, wants to reactivate its real estate division in Spain. Its Spanish subsidiary was created in 1989, but following the burst of the real estate bubble, its activity in the sector was paralysed. Now, it is returning to property: at the end of 2016, it completed the construction of a hotel in Barcelona, the Ibis Bogatell, located next to the Olympic Park, and it wants to increase the number of projects in its portfolio in 2017.

That is according to Bouygues’ Spanish subsidiary. “We are not going to promote residential properties”, specified the Director General of Bouygues Inmobiliaria, Ana Vidal. “We are going to focus on the hotel, office and retail sectors, amongst others”. Although the French Group never disappeared from the Commercial Registry, Bouygues’ real estate activity in Spain has been suspended for almost seven years.

Before the real estate bubble burst, the multi-national firm was a key player in the market, in particular in the construction of business parks and shopping centres. In the case of the latter, Bouygues constructed Parque Oeste (Alcorcón, Madrid), Alcalá de Guadaira (Sevilla) and El Triangle (Barcelona). In the year 2000, the French group expanded its operations to Portugal.

The crisis forced the subsidiary to carry out an aggressive capital reduction in 2010, which left its own funds at 10%. “We are not going to be a Metrovacesa or a Merlin”, said Vidal. “We want to boost the development of projects in Spain through selective, carefully-chosen projects, which prioritise environmental improvement”, added the Director General. One of the models that the real estate division is likely to promote are eco-neighbourhoods, such as the one Bouygues developed in Bordeaux, called “Ginko”.

Bouygues Inmobiliaria is looking to become a “pure property developer”, adopting the turn-key formula, whereby it will take responsibility for identifying the plots of land, designing the properties and executing the construction work. In addition to Barcelona, the subsidiary has acquired a plot of land measuring 18,000 m2 in the industrial area of Julián Camarillo, to the east of Madrid.

Bouygues’ return to activity is further evidence of the recovery of the sector in Spain. Nevertheless, the improvement is slow and uneven. The property development sector estimates that 450,000 new homes were constructed in 2016, compared with 400,000 during the previous year. And house prices have soared in Madrid and Barcelona, along with in the traditionally robust Basque real estate market; however, they are falling in more than half of Spain’s provinces.

Original story: El Independiente (by Pablo García)

Translation: Carmel Drake