Property group sells industrial estates in £41m deal
LondonMetric has sold on another part of its portfolio it took on when it acquired A&J Mucklow with the £40.5m sale of four industrial estates in the West Midlands.
Hines has bought the multi-let sites in Birmingham and Rugby, which together generate annual rent of £2.7m across 435,000 sq ft of space.
LondonMetric bought Mucklow for £415m in June 2019. The property group has now raised £194m through the sale of former Mucklow assets which represented 35% of the original portfolio.
Andrew Jones, chief executive of LondonMetric, said: “These assets have delivered returns materially above our initial expectations from a combination of rental growth and yield compression. The sale is expected to be EPS accretive and represents our exit from highly operational multi-let industrial estates.
“Looking forward, we will continue to focus on aligning the portfolio to NNN [triple net lease] lease assets that can deliver secure income and growth without incurring dilutive operational costs.”
The latest sales were Kingshill, Redwood Park and Shenstone industrial estates in Birmingham and Triton Park in Rugby.
The estates were valued at £30.9m when LondonMetric acquired Mucklow four years ago. The company said the deal price is in line with March 2023 book value and represents a net initial yield of 6.2%.
