Vukile to Inject €600M into its Socimi Castellana Properties

5 March 2019 – Eje Prime

Vukile is going to inject €600 million into its Spanish Socimi, Castellana Properties, to enlarge its portfolio. The aim of the South African fund is to debut the Socimi, which specialises in shopping centres, on the main stock market during 2019.

The company currently owns 19 commercial assets in Spain worth €898 million and has a leverage ratio of 48%, but before making the leap onto the main stock market, the company wants to increase its asset portfolio to €1,500 million and reduce its leverage ratio to below 45%.

The plan is to carry out a €600 million capital increase, to finance the additional asset purchases, which will be subscribed by its main shareholder, Vukile.

Original story: Eje Prime

Translation: Carmel Drake

Record Financing Deal: Testa Raises €0.8bn From 16 Banks

15 December 2017 – El Confidencial

Testa has managed to close new financing amounting to €0.8 billion and, in a move that has made the deal remarkable, has not had to use any of its buildings as collateral.

As El Confidencial revealed, the entity in which Santander, BBVA, Merlin and Acciona hold stakes, was negotiating to refinance all of its debt so as to be well positioned to make its debut on the stock market and to have a sizeable sum to make new purchases.

In the end, according to financial sources, the Socimi has obtained the backing of 16 financial entities for the largest unsecured loan ever granted to a company in this sector in Spain. The new loan will be structured in three tranches, whose maturity dates will range between two and five years.

The first, amounting to €0.35 billion, is a bullet loan, which will be repaid in its entirety upon maturity, in December 2022; the second, for the same amount, is a 2-year bridge loan, which the company plans to refinance with a bond; and the third, a line of credit amounting to €0.1 billion has a mortgage guarantee over five years.

The entities that have participated in this financing are Banco Sabadell, Santander, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Caixabank, Citigroup, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ING, JP Morgan, Mediobanca, Natixis and Société Générale.

Following this agreement, Testa’s leverage ratio has increased from 15% to just under 35% and all of its debt is now corporate.

The Socimi is working with a view to making its debut on the main stock market in the spring. It will make that move with a portfolio comprising 9,219 homes dedicated exclusively to rent, spread over 111 buildings and worth almost €2.2 billion.

Nevertheless, thanks to the signing of this new financing, the Socimi now has fresh money to take on new acquisitions before its stock market debut, in line with the purchase that it announced in September of 135 homes from BuildingCenter, the real estate subsidiary of CaixaBank.

65% of Testa’s portfolio is located in Madrid, San Sebastían accounts for 7%, Barcelona 5%, Valencia 4%, Mallorca 3% and other locations the remaining 15%.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Ruth Ugalde)

Translation: Carmel Drake

Merlin Properties Takes Out A Mortgage On Marineda City

19 February 2015 – La Voz de Galicia

Merlin Properties has taken out a ten-year loan with a fixed interest rate of 2.66%.

Merlin Properties, the listed real estate investment company (Socimi), which acquired the Marineda City shopping centre from its developers (the businessmen Manuel Jove, José Collazo and José Souto) last July, has just signed a loan for €133.6 million and has secured it with the A Corunian retail complex. The loan, signed with Allianz Real Estate, has been taken out for a ten-year term, at the end of which all of the principal will be repaid, at a fixed interest rate of 2.66%, according to a statement sent by the company to the National Securities Market Commission (Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores or CNMV).

With this loan, which sources at the company assure will not be used to finance the purchase of Marineda, on which it spent €260 million, Merlin increases its gross financial debt to €1,144 million, which is equivalent to 39% of the value of the company’s assets. Sources at the Socimi say that they are continuing to work on the financing of other real estate assets in their portfolio, whilst ensuring that they do not exceed their leverage limit of 50%.

Marineda City is the largest shopping centre in Galicia and the second largest in Spain by surface area. It was opened in 2011 and has a buildable surface area of more than half a million square metres, of which 196,000 sqm are leasable. The retail complex received 15.1 million visitors in 2014, i.e. 15% more than in the previous year.

Original story: La Voz de Galicia

Translation: Carmel Drake