The Luxembourg-headquartered x+bricks made further waves in June with its more than €500m acquisition of 120 grocery-anchored properties from TLG Immobilien and its subsidiaries, in one of the largest-ever grocery-anchored property transactions in German history.
The acquired portfolio, which has a total lettable space of around 290,000 sqm, is spread across Germany with a focus on the metropolitan regions of Berlin/Potsdam (21%), Dresden (19%) and Leipzig (%). The existing tenants include all the major German grocery operators. The deal leapfrogs x+bricks into the big league of investors in the grocery-anchored real estate sector, the only part of retail real estate that has not been struggling of late.
Founded only in August 2018, x+bricks invests in food-anchored real estate such as supermarkets, discounters or specialty shopping centers. The focus is on the purchase of portfolios and individual properties in prospering cities throughout Germany.
The company bases its strategy on its use of its own proprietary Pata software to analyse properties and potential deals, either as portfolios or single properties in qualifying cities. This latest deal, which is expected to close in Q4, brings its property portfolio to about €1bn with a total of 220 assets.
CEO and founder Sascha Wilhelm said, 'With our latest acquisition, the proportion of our rental income that we generate with tenants who supply Germany’s population with everyday consumer goods will increase to well over 80%. Our portfolio thus proves to be absolutely robust – even in times of crisis.'
x+bricks now has in its top management several ex-colleagues of Sascha Wilhem at Corestate Capital, including CFO Jorgen Verink and head of operations Michael Huber. Also on the top team as an advisor is Stephan Zimmermann, formerly co-head of retail specialist Acrest, before selling the business to JLL.
x+bricks was in the headlines recently for its role in assisting Luxembourg-based Russian investment company SCP Group which bought 276 stores of the hypermarket chain REAL from listed retail group METRO. x+bricks and SCP have established a new joint venture s+bricks to try and salvage as many of the struggling REAL stores as possible with a new sustainable concept. Several other retail groups, including Kaufland and EDEKA have expressed an interest in taking over up to 150 of the stores, while Lidl owner Schwarz-Gruppe wants to swallow the e-commerce division of REAL.
