Bruntwood hails ‘resilient year’
Bruntwood has revealed a resilient performance last year, buoyed by progress made in its SciTech network.
The property group saw its underlying profits edge up slightly to £40m for the year to September 2020.
It boosted its cash reserves by more than 50%, to £26.3m, and still had undrawn facilities of £50m.
Chris Oglesby
Chris Oglesby, chief executive of Bruntwood, said: “The nature of our business means we do not measure success over annual accounting periods but over much longer time-horizons. But despite this, we showed great strength and resilience in 2020, with the underlying performance of Bruntwood improving during the UK’s greatest economic crisis of modern times.”
The group is split between its workspace division Bruntwood Works and its science park arm Bruntwood SciTech, which is a joint venture with Legal & General.
Bruntwood’s turnover fell 16% to £135m, which it mainly attributed to the impact of “the one-off nature of the ‘develop to sell’ car park and hotel at Circle Square” in its 2019 figures.
It recorded a valuation loss of £21.2m on its nearly-£1bn Bruntwood Works portfolio as it invested capital to maintain its portfolio’s value position.
The group saw revaluation movements in its joint ventures and other accounting provisions meant it recorded a statutory pre-tax loss of £18.9m.
Despite the obvious challenges caused by Covid-19, and the much-debated uncertainty around the long-term strength of city centre office markets, there were still a number of positives for the Manchester-based group.
Rental income continued to perform strongly and grew overall by 2% during the financial year.
The group continued to progress with its long-term investment into new developments and the transformation of its existing portfolio.
Bruntwood SciTech’s portfolio of innovation districts, which includes Birmingham Health Innovation Campus and Manchester Science Park, increased turnover by one-third to £40m and its portfolio value rose 20% to £527m.
Oglesby added: “As the pandemic struck, we worked quickly to deliver a new strategy – stabilise operations, support customers, and manage costs. We accelerated the Works and SciTech propositions to support crucial areas of the economy. We got closer to customers, deepening relationships and navigated the pandemic together.”
