HSBC upgrades Capital & Regional to 'buy'

HSBC has upgraded Capital & Regional, a British manager of shopping centres, to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ but lowered its price target to 66p from 69p.

The company’s recent disposal of the Camberley shopping centre and refinancing has reduced the bank’s equity valuation by £14.5m, equivalent to 2 percentage points, HSBC said. The sale, completed on 11 Nov 2016, for £86m was at a 3% discount to the June 2016 valuation of £88.5m.

Capital & Regional stated that advanced discussions were underway to refinance its debt associated with the refinancing of The Mall debt facility, which at June 2016 had a weighted average debt cost of 3.47% comprising of £233.3m fixed rate debt with an interest rate of 1.86% plus margin; and a floating rate tranche based on three month LIBOR of £146.5m.

“Having incorporated this into our estimates and then further adjusted for the negative capital growth recorded in the CBRE secondary shopping centre index in the third quarter of 2016, we have reduced our full year 2016 net asset value per share (NAVPS) forecast from 73p to 68p. Our full year 2017 estimate falls marginally by 1pps, from our full year 2018 NAVPS estimate is unchanged.”

Despite the reduction in the company's estimated net asset value per share, the upside on offer to the target price and the higher dividend yield salvaged the broker's recommendation on the stock.

“We upgrade to Buy (from Hold) as the upside and a relatively high level of dividend yield and growth is an attractive combination.”

The share price rose 0.94% to 53.40p at 1044 GMT on Friday.