Londonmetric has completed £70m worth of acquisitions and offloaded £50m of assets in the real estate investment trust’s (REIT) latest dealmaking spree.
The news comes after Londonmetric’s takeover of LXi REIT earlier this year, which doubled its overall net asset base and created the UK’s fourth-largest investment trust.
The London-listed trust said on Monday that it had bought seven warehouses with an average unexpired lease term of 15 years.
The warehouses include a 182,000 square foot regional logistics warehouse in Avonmouth, Bristol, let to grocery chain Farmfoods, and a 211,000 square foot fully let urban logistics park in Wednesbury, West Midlands, that Londonmetric bought from a pension fund for £25m.
The rest of the properties are in Leeds, Derby, Swindon, Bolton, and Farnham, respectively. They total 113,000 square feet and were purchased for £18.9m. Two were let to builder’s merchants Travis Perkins and MKM, while one was let to Jewson.
The £50m of disposals comprise ten former LXi assets and a former CT Property Trust (CTPT) asset.
The assets include a Compass training centre in Milton Keynes sold for £23.7m, and a car showroom in York let to Vertu sold for £10.5m.
Andrew Jones, Londonmetric’s chief executive, said: “We have been very clear on our desire to monetise some assets acquired from our corporate takeovers.
“We have now sold c.£100m of LXi assets, with 13 of the 16 non-core CTPT assets also sold at an average of 14 per cent above our original underwrite values.
“We have successfully reinvested these proceeds into high quality properties, in stronger sectors that will deliver accelerated income growth.”