Safestore continues on the acquisition trail

Operating mostly in London and the south-east of the UK as well as in Paris, the company opened six new stores and made two bolt-on acquisitions. In July, it completed the acquisition of Space Maker for £42.3m, the ninth largest self-storage portfolio in the UK with 12 stores and a lettable area of 496,000 sq ft.

Since the year-end it added has a further 12 sites with the acquisition of Stork Self Storage for £56m. Operating as Alligator Self Storage, this was the eleventh largest self-storage portfolio, and gives Safestore a total of 146 stores, including 26 in Paris. In addition, there are three new UK stores in the pipeline which will add 146,000 sq ft of new space. Overall occupancy rose from 73.7 per cent to 75 per cent, and management remains focused on filling the 1.7m sq ft of available capacity currently unlet.

Trading was also strong in Paris, with revenue growing 4 per cent to €36.8m (£32.4m) on a like-for-like basis, with occupancy up from 80.7 per cent to 84.7 per cent. New developments in Paris are hard to come by, but Safestore opened one new store in south-eastern Paris, and after the year-end it exchanged contracts on an 80,000 sq ft site to the west of Paris.

Just over a year ago, a new website was launched in Paris, hoping to build on the success of the UK website which now accounts for over 82 per cent of all enquiries, of which over half originate from mobile devices.

Analysts at Peel Hunt are forecasting adjusted net asset value per share as at the October 2018 year-end of 338.8p, up from 329p a year earlier.