Sirius buys three new assets, boosts rental income by 6.3%
Sirius Real Estate, which operates branded business parks and flexible workspaces throughout Germany, added assets in Saarbrücken, Esslingen and Düsseldorf recently, and confirmed that it expects to increase annual rental income for the full-year to end-March by 6.3% to €79m, despite the loss of €7.1m income from assets sold off.
In Saarbrücken, Sirius bought the Union Center office complex from a creditor consortium advised by Situs (previously Hatfield Philips) for €28.1m. The 47,000 sqm asset was bought out of a forced insolvency, and had been restructured and stabilised by Situs in its role as special servicer. The property is 65% leased to Postbank and the Saarland's Ministry of Finance, among other tenants, and offers an initial net yield of 9%
The deal was exclusively managed by Frankfurt-based Waterway Investments, which specialises in non-core real estate transactions, particularly in secondary markets. It follows on from an earlier deal managed by Waterway late last year when it sold Orion's THOR 2 portfolio, again to Sirius, in a €24m deal.
In Frickenhausen near Esslingen, Sirius purchased a 29,000 sqm, half-vacant structure for €11.2mn from a property company of Grossmann Group at a 4 % yield. Sirius also acquired the 9,000 sqm storage and office facility In der Steele 39-45 in Düsseldorf for €8.1m, at a 6.6% yield.
In a recent statement, Sirius Real Estate, which is listed both in London and Johannesburg, said that its like-for-like annual income increased by more than 5% for the full year ended March, boosted by continued occupier demand and organic rental income growth.
The company was involved in significant transactional activity in the year, with the proceeds of the sale of €103m of mature assets and two capital raises of €15m in March last year and €25m in July part-funding the acquisition of 13 assets for €163.7m.
It said average occupancy of the acquired assets was about 58%, which provided new rental income and capital growth opportunities.
Sirius chief executive Andrew Coombs said that given that a key focus in the period was on recycling capital from mature assets into new opportunities with greater value add potential, it was pleasing to have sold and reinvested over €250m of property, while delivering increases in rental income on a total and like-for-like basis.
Coombs believed this reflected a number of key factors, including good occupational demand for Sirius’ workspace products from the large German small and medium enterprise sector.