NewRiver Retail (NRR) had an extremely eventful first half. It raised £67m of new equity in July, some of which was almost immediately deployed when NewRiver, together with its joint venture partner Pimco, bought a shopping centre in Middlesbrough for £50m. The rest was spent in two major deals announced alongside the half-year results.
One was a highly unusual sale-and-leaseback deal with the pub company Marston's (MARS), which has sold NewRiver 202 pubs for £90m. NewRiver wants to turn the pubs into convenience stores or restaurants but, until then, Marston's will continue trading - while paying NewRiver £12.2m a year in rent for up to four years.
The other deal involved the acquisition of two shopping centres from insurance group Axa, one in Wales and the other in central Oxford. "It’s rare you get a chance to acquire such a prime pitch in a town like Oxford," says chief executive David Lockhart.
All this helped increase rental profits by 60 per cent to £3.03m, while an improving market pushed the portfolio value up 0.5 per cent. But the dilutive impact of the equity issuance kept EPS flat at 6.5p and depressed adjusted book value per share to 222p. Broker Liberum Capital expects full-year adjusted book value of 241p.
NEWRIVER RETAIL (NRR) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD PRICE: | 267p | MARKET VALUE: | £ 178m | |
| TOUCH: | 265-269p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 268p | LOW: 196p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 6.0% | TRADING PROP: | nil | |
| PREMIUM TO NAV: | 21% | |||
| INVESTMENT PROP: | £240m | NET DEBT: | 58% | |
| Half-year to 30 Sep | Net asset value (p) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 246 | 1.41 | 1.80 | 6.00 |
| 2013 | 220 | 5.22 | 10.4 | 6.00 |
| % change | -11 | +270 | +478 | |
Ex-div: 8 Jan Payment: 31 Jan | ||||
