Helical (HLCL) sharpened its focus on prime London and Manchester office space during the first half of its accounting year. This involved selling its retirement village portfolio for £102m, a 13 per cent discount to book value. Although this weighed on the group’s adjusted net asset value, chief executive Gerald Kaye pointed out that after stripping out the impact of this non-core sale, the adjusted net asset value would have been around 481p a share, implying a discount of 36 per cent.
Non-core assets now account for just 4 per cent of Helical's portfolio, after three retail assets were also sold for £73m, or a £1.5m profit. Asset sales also meant overall net rental income reduced by almost a quarter to £18m. However, with phase one of its London office space The Bower fully let, the estimated rental value of its core portfolio increased by 3.4 per cent on a like-for-like basis.
Post-period end, it signed leases with two tenants for its One Creechurch Place London office scheme, representing 48 per cent of the building space. It is also under offer with two further tenants, which if concluded would result in the building being 70 per cent let. Since September it also sold its London office building C-Space for £74m, marginally above its March book value.
Analysts at Peel Hunt expect adjusted net asset value of 488p a share at the end of March 2018, up from 473p at the end of FY2017.
| HELICAL (HLCL) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 306p | MARKET VALUE: | £400m | |
| TOUCH: | 304.75-306p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 360p | LOW: 253p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 2.8% | TRADING PROPERTIES: | £95m | |
| DISCOUNT TO NAV: | 30% | NET DEBT: | 109% | |
| INVESTMENT PROPERTIES: | £987m* | |||
| Half-year to 30 Sept | Net asset value (p) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2016 | 445 | 31.1 | 27.8 | 2.4 |
| 2017 | 435 | 1.2 | 0.3 | 2.5 |
| % change | -1 | -96 | -99 | +4 |
| Ex-div: | 23 Nov | |||
| Payment: | 22 Dec | |||
| *Includes joint ventures | ||||
