Property regeneration firm racks up £22.35m with asset disposals

A London property regeneration company has announced the sale of three of its holdings.

U+I, which is a specialist regeneration developer and investor, sold three retail outlets for a total of more than £20m as part of its strategic disposals programme, which aims to allow the company to reinvest.

The properties sold were the Crown Glass Shopping Centre in Nailsea, for £11.15m, two units at the Killingworth Centre in Newcastle for £7.5m, and 89-107 Queen Street in Cardiff for £3.75m.

U+I reported that the combined assets were sold marginally below their aggregate book value.

The company said: “These transactions leave £25m in cash within our facility with Aviva as available to reinvest - when conditions start to normalise - as we continue to consider new opportunistic acquisitions that meet the criteria for our investment portfolio strategy or transfer appropriate assets across from within our regeneration activities.

Matthew Weiner, CEO of U+I, commented: “These disposals demonstrate further progress in our investment portfolio transition strategy as we focus on building a dynamic, flexible portfolio, driven by placemaking regeneration in our core geographies.

“We targeted the disposal of these mature assets at our interims.

“It shows some resilience to have managed to complete these disposals at so close to aggregate half year book value in this challenging environment, where decision-making has almost ground to a halt and valuations are increasingly pressured.

“For now our priority is to preserve cash but, once conditions start to approach normality, we will review opportunities to acquire regeneration focussed assets, whilst increasingly moving some components of our own development assets into our investment portfolio to drive long-term value.”