Waterway sells Orion's THOR 2 portfolio to Sirius in €24m deal

Sirius Real Estate, which focuses on German business parks with light industrial properties, has bought the "Thor 2" Portfolio from Orion Capital Managers for €24m in a deal exclusively orchestrated by Frankfurt-based Waterway Investments, who specialise in identifying and marketing German non-core properties.

The THOR 2 portfolio consists of two commercial properties with a total lettable area of 26,254 square meters located on the outskirts of Dusseldorf and Frankfurt.

The “Point N” office complex is located in Neuss with a lettable area of 18,258 square meters and a vacancy of 61.7%. The second property is an office complex in Neu-Isenburg with a lettable area of 7,996 square meters and a vacancy of 58.7%.

According to Karsten Kohlmann, joint managing partner of Waterway Investments, "The sale of the THOR 2 portfolio further underlines the attractiveness of secondary office locations in German metropolitan areas where vacancy is seen as opportunity and not as risk. Our focus on the German B, C and D real estate markets as well as our corresponding investor networks allow us to market those value-add portfolios successfully and in a value-maximizing way for our clients.”

Orion Capital Managers had acquired the Odin portfolio with its 19 office properties from Credit-Suisse-Fonds in 2015 and has since resold several value-add properties from this package. The THOR 2 package comes from a subsidiary of Orion Capital's European Real Estate Fund IV.

Sirius Real Estate, which is joinly listed on the London and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges, recently produced strong full-year figures, boosting pre-tax profit by 34% to €76.4m from last year's €57.1m.

The value of its portfolio increased during the year to €823m, up from €687.5m, sending its net asset value per share up 10.3% to 58.82 cents during the year.

This year, Sirius has already spent €153.2m on buying new properties, including €80.4m on buildings in Frankfurt, while increasing its overall occupancy rate from 80% to 82%.

CEO Andrew Coombs commented in June, "Our ambition is to increase our portfolio by another 50%, whilst also taking advantage of market conditions to recycle mature and non-core assets with greater opportunity. We have the operating platform in place today to support our expansion plans and alongside this we have the local market knowledge and expertise to uncover value from more complex assets as we have been doing since inception."