Hansteen profits surge

Industrial property specialist, Hansteen Holdings reported a sharp increase in full year profit and underlined its confidence in future trading with an increase in its dividend payment.

The property investor said IFRS pre-tax profit jumped to £46.2m for the year ended December 31st 2012 from £8.9m a year earlier. Normalised income profit for the year rose to £30.8m from £25.7m before.

Diluted EPRA NAV per share increased to 83p from 82p in 2011.

Chairman James Hambro commented: "The board continues to believe that Hansteen's proven business model, which is to purchase carefully, finance prudently and manage well, a large and diverse industrial portfolio, will produce secure, high and growing returns."

"Although over the last few years the Hansteen management team has successfully let or sold material amounts of the vacant property that Hansteen has purchased since flotation, there is still nearly 18% of the portfolio vacant and available to improve earnings and NAV."

The group's property portfolio at December 31st 2012 rose to 2.6m sq m/28.1m sq ft compared to 2.4m sq m/25.9m sq ft a year earlier.

Total property increased by 5% to £1bn and annualised rent roll was up 7% to £85m. Property valuations increased in both Europe and UK with an overall valuation increase of 2%.

"The decision to build Hansteen's direct marketing and asset management teams across the UK, Benelux and Germany is now providing the group with the platform to better exploit our existing portfolio and gives us the opportunity to efficiently absorb any new acquisitions," Hansteen added.

The group has declared a second interim dividend of 2.7p per share, giving a total of 4.5p, up from 4.0p last time.

Hansteen said it intends to maintain its prudently progressive dividend policy for the foreseeable future.

CJ