Aroundtown SA, now Germany’s largest commercial real estate company, said it planned a share-buy-back program for up to 120 million shares, beginning this June until September. The buy-back program will equate to 8.9% of the total voting-eligible shares, and will cost up to €500m. The decision was authorized at the beginning of May following a hefty fall in the share price (today around €5.50) as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown, and the subsequent share price discount to the underlying NAV (€8.80), and the company’s current performance.
So far this year Aroundtown has signed €400m of disposals of non-core and/or mature properties, of which €200m has been completed over the course of several deals, as part of the company’s strategy to dispose of non-core assets. The sales, in Germany and the Netherlands, were made at a multiple of 19x, and included 30% of properties for development, 45% office and 25% retail and hotel properties. Aroundtown said the sales were at book value.
Following the completion of its takeover of listed TLG Immobilien, Aroundtown has also finalized its new top management team, with deputy CEO Andrew Wallis leaving the company, to be replaced by Barak Bar-Hen from TLG who takes over also as COO, working alongside long-term CEO Shmuel Mayo. New additions are Klaus Krägel as Chief Development Officer (he is currently still on the TLG Supervisory Board) and Oschrie Massatschi (Executive Director at Aroundtown) as Chief Capital Markets Officer.
The new Aroundtown /TLG Immobilien entity has a combined NAV of about €20bn, of which €15bn is coming from Aroundtown. Originally, TLG had planned to take over the larger company as the smaller partner, but the roles later got reversed. Aroundtown now owns about 80% of TLG’s shares.
