Hammerson offloads two retail parks for £164m

Shopping centre owner Hammerson has exchanged contracts for the sale of two retail parks to Capreon for £164m.

The sale of the Imperial Retail Park in Bristol and Fife Central Retail Park in Kirkcaldy bring Hammerson's total proceeds from disposals this year to £300m.

Bought in 2012 as part of the Junction portfolio, Imperial covers a total of 32,200 square metres and is the largest retail and leisure destination in South Bristol. It's anchored by B&Q, The Range, HomeSense, M&S Foodhall, Next and Boots, and is currently 97% let.

Meanwhile, the Fife Central retail park , acquired in 2005, covers a total of 30,200 square metres and is 95% let. It's anchored by B&Q, Sainsbury's, M&S Simply Food and Next.

The total sale price represents a net initial yield of 7% and a discount of approximately 10% to the December 2017 book value.

Chief executive officer David Atkins said: "We continue to see opportunities to dispose of selected assets in order to better deploy capital on behalf of our shareholders. With £300m of sales achieved this year, we are already over half-way to reaching our planned disposal target for 2018. We look forward to providing a further update on disposals and capital deployment tomorrow when we report our half year results."