Markets in brief: Land Securities; Coalfield Resources; Marshalls

THE owner of Trinity Leeds has today reported a significant rise in pre-tax profits.

Land Securities reported pre-tax profit of £397.9m, compared with £131.4m for the same period last year and said in its retail portfolio, the recently completed Trinity Leeds is performing strongly as a destination for shoppers and retailers, reinforcing the business’s view that prime centres can still be created profitably in the right locations.

The group said: “At Trinity Leeds we are now 96% let or in solicitors’ hands and on 17 October we opened Trinity Kitchen, our street food concept, which has seen very strong trade since opening.”

The new 107,000 sq ft Primark store has been handed over for fit-out and is scheduled to open next month.

“This, together with the attraction of Trinity Kitchen, will assist in the leasing of the remaining few units in the scheme,” the group said. 

In the group’s half-yearly results for the six months ended  September 30 2013, the firm said it continued the push into the leisure sector by increasing its stake in the X Leisure fund – which operates West Yorkshire’s X-scape-  to 95%.

The property group’s combined portfolio increased in value from £11.45bn at March 31 2013 to £11.76bn.

The landlord is currently are on site to deliver a store for Aldi at Cardigan Fields, Leeds and has submitted an application for the extension of its Leeds-based White Rose Centre.

:::

COALFIELD Resources, which is now focused on its stake in property business Harworth Estates Group, said today that following the completion of a rights issue raising £6m the company is now debt free having repaid its short term loan facility to Lloyds.

The company’s only investment is its 24.9% shareholding in Harworth Estates Property Group.

Based on this investment the company had net assets of £46.4m at June 29.
The company said: “There has been no material change in the company’s net assets in the period since based on the results of Harworth Estates to the end of September.

“Harworth Estates continues to perform well and in line with our expectation and as reported in our half year accounts it intends to instruct an external valuation of its portfolio in December, the results of which we will incorporate into the company’s results for its 2013 year end.”

The Doncaster-based group made a loss of £1.7m in the six months to June 29 which was mainly due to the write off of mining debts and restructuring fees not recoverable.

UK Coal originally finalised a restructure last December which saw the creation of two divisions covering mining and property with the company renamed Coalfield Resources.

:::

LANDSCAPING specialist Marshalls said this morning it is seeing a continuing improvement in its sales performance following the very cold start to the year.

The Huddersfield-based group said that revenue from continuing operations for the 10 months ended October 31 was almost unchanged at £265m from £266m in 2012, and compares with a 4% reduction at the half year.

Sales to the public sector and commercial end market, which represent around 62% of Marshalls’ sales, were down slightly at 2% compared with the prior year period, on a continuing basis.

Sales to the domestic end market, representing 33% of group sales, were unchanged.

The survey of domestic installers at the end of October 2013 revealed order books of 11.0 weeks (2012: 8.7 weeks) compared with 10.2 weeks at the end of June 2013 (2012: 9.0 weeks). Marshalls said the installer order book has not been at this high level, for a sustained period, since 2004.

International sales growth continued and increased by 20% in the ten months ended October 31 and is 5% of group sales. Marshalls said continued progress is being made in developing the International business.

“Marshalls continues to focus on product innovation and service delivery initiatives to drive sales growth in all its end markets in order to benefit from the operational and financial flexibility that has been built into the group over recent years. The group is well placed to improve trading margins and deliver growth if market conditions demonstrate sustained improvement,” the company said.