Organic growth boosts interim profits at Sirius Real Estate

For the six months ending on 30 September, the business park operator reported a 44.5% increase in pre-tax profit to €54.7m, thanks in part to a rise in rental income from €32.6m to €35.3m.

In parallel, the book value of its portfolio increased from €823.3m at the end of its last financial year in March to €857.4m at the end of the half, despite having made more than €103m-worth of disposals throughout the period.

The firm said it had a 79% occupancy rating at the end of the half, down slightly from the 81% seen a year earlier, reflecting vacancies in several of its newly acquired assets.

In terms of organic growth, the firm said "Organic growth was seen mostly through rental improvements, where like-for-like annualised rental income increased by €1.2m to €65.2m in the six month period, representing an increase of 2.0% from the position at March 2017, whilst the average like-for-like rental rate per sqm increased from €5.11 to €5.17."

Sirius declared an interim dividend of 1.56 euro cents per share, a 12.2% year-on-year increase.

Chief executive officer Andrew Coombs, said, "The occupational demand for our space offerings continues to be strong and it is very pleasing to see that our management platform is capitalising on this. We are also encouraged that, despite seeing stronger competition for assets in 2017, our recycling programme is progressing well and we expect to complete the programme by the financial year-end."

As of 1625 GMT, shares had fallen back 0.315 to 64.05p.