This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
GLOBAL retail giant Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (ASX: URW) is feeling confident heading into 2022 after seeing strong recovery rates across various metrics in FY21.
With France’s financial year ending 31 December 2021, URW posted a 3.7% drop in net rental income growth for FY21, at €1.7 million, a fall in like-for-like growth of 1.6%.
This was mainly driven by a 3.9% decline in growth in shopping centre assets, which make up the vast majority share of rental income, at €1.6 million.
Rent collection was at 88% across URW’s portfolio, compared to 80% reported at FY20 and 73% reported at H121.
Leasing transactions were returned to pre-pandemic levels, with 2,399 deals signed, a 60% increase on FY20 levels and 2% on FY19,
Tenant sales were at 93% of pre-pandemic levels, with footfall in Europe at 81% of 2019 levels, while vacancies improved by 190bps, at 7%, compared to 8.9% in the first half
URW also secured liquidity for the next three years, with €12.1 billion of cash and available facilities.
While also reducing its 2021 pro-forma IFRS net financial debt by €2.2 billion to €22.1 billion, with 140 bps reduction in IFRS LTV to 43.3%, or 42.5% pro-forma for signed disposals.
URW also made progress in its program to reduce its financial exposure to the US, offloading five US regional centres.
“Our pragmatic and proactive leasing strategy has delivered robust results, including an increase in rent for longer-term leases and a material increase of sales based rents in 2021, and positions URW to benefit further as market conditions continue to improve,” said Jean-Marie Tritant, CEO of URW.
URW forecasts its 2022 AREPS to be in the range of €8.20 to €8.40, thanks to an improving operating environment in the latter half of 2021.
