Growing consumer confidence is starting to become more pronounced: that's good news for Intu Properties (INTU), owner of 23m square feet of retail space spread across many of the UK's biggest retail and leisure destinations. Including its share in joint ventures, the property portfolio enjoyed a £162m revaluation surplus, but this was nothing like the £573m notched up a year earlier; hence the drop in headline profits.
Footfall grew by 1 per cent, and the big retailers are looking to expand their floorspace in the larger store locations, where Intu professes to have the UK's most digitally connected centres - it boasts an active online marketing database of more than 2m subscribers. Not surprisingly, occupancy remained high at 95 per cent.
Like-for-like rental income was down 1 per cent, but this reflected a number of sites that are currently undergoing refurbishment work. The group has a development pipeline of £1.5bn spanning the next 10 years, and five projects are currently being developed.
Intu is also expanding its Spanish operation, and in January it bought the 200,000 square metre shopping resort in Zaragoza for €451m (£316m), with a view to tapping into Spain's economic recovery: consumer confidence there is now at its highest since 2000.
Analysts at Numis forecast adjusted net asset value at the December year-end of 406p (from 379p in 2014).
| INTU PROPERTIES (INTU) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ORD PRICE: | 328.4p | MARKET VALUE: | £4.4bn | |
| TOUCH: | 328.2-328.5p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 377p | LOW: 306p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 4.2% | TRADING PROP: | nil | |
| DISCOUNT TO NAV: | 8% | |||
| INVESTMENT PROP: | £9.4bn* | NET DEBT: | 93% | |
| Half-year to 30 Jun | Net asset value (p) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 362 | 602 | 51.8 | 4.6 |
| 2015 | 356 | 266 | 20.4 | 4.6 |
| % change | -2 | -56 | -61 | - |
Ex-div: 22 Oct Payment: 24 Nov *Includes £906m in joint ventures | ||||
