British Land has gone on a £330m spending spree in the past six months, snapping up the Green Lanes shopping centre in the centre of Barnstaple for £30m today.
This comes hot on the heels of the company's £240m acquisition of Drake Circus, a 570,000 square foot mall in Plymouth. It expands British Land's shopping centre portfolio to 12 and brings the retail acquisitions made since last March to £340m. The group, whose flagship retail property is the 1.5m sq ft Meadowhall shopping centre on the outskirts of Sheffield, said plans were "well under way" to create a new 45,000 sq ft leisure centre at the Glasgow Fort Shopping Park. It has also agreed to buy a 20 acre retail site in Luton.
"We've been busy," said Chris Grigg, the chief executive. He sees plenty of buying opportunities at "more realistic prices" and continued investor demand for high quality space in retail and central London offices, although he admitted that the "UK recovery is likely to be muted".
British Land, one of Britain's biggest property developers, has pumped £1.9bn into new properties and developments, including six major office projects in the past nine months. It has fired the starting gun on a 610,000 sq ft tower in Leadenhall Street in the City of London, nicknamed the Cheesegrater, which had been put on hold during the recession but is now being built in a joint venture with Oxford Properties.
The company will start work at Marble Arch House, bought last month, in the summer and is pushing ahead with a major office refurbishment at 199 Bishopsgate, formerly occupied by Royal Bank of Scotland, to be undertaken with private equity giant Blackstone.
British Land made £64m in underlying profit before tax in its third quarter, up 10% on 2009, with the net value of its assets per share climbing to 548p, up 4.4% in the quarter and 25% in the last 12 months. The gross value of its property portfolio increased 2.3% in the quarter to £9.3bn, up 13% on a year ago.
"These figures show rising confidence in the marketplace," said Alan Carter at Evolution Securities. "Capital values for good kit are still rising, and there are signs of a modest rental recovery for good quality retail assets, as well as more obviousy in the central London office market."