LXB Retail Properties has been hinting at an imminent disposal of two other large assets following on from the sale of their investment in Sutton. today they have announced the sale of their investments at Biggleswade and Rushden. They’ll get £58.5m for Biggleswade now, a further £10.2m when phase one of that development is completed (on track for May 2015) plus another £11.3m when phase two is completed in 2016. In addition, if all goes to plan, they’ll get £150m for Rushden over 2015 and 2016. They intend to return some cash to shareholders.
Aberdeen Property Trust has exchanged contracts to acquire the whole of the Group’s Biggleswade investment, principally the A1 Retail Park. LXB will retain responsibility for overseeing the completion of the development and for securing tenants for those units at the A1 Retail Park which are not currently pre-let and active discussions are in progress with several retailers to pre-let the last four units which comprise 35,500 sq ft of ground floor space. Aberdeen are paying for phase two’s development costs however.
Rushden Lakes is being acquired by the Crown Estate and they will fund all of the development costs. The principal pre-completion conditions involve securing an amended planning permission to accommodate the precise requirements of the target tenants and achieving a number of further pre-lets. The initial and potential future proceeds (net of funding costs and excluding any potential further receipts for the second and third phases at Rushden Lakes) which will result from these transactions are expected to be approximately £150m of which £68.7m will be received by mid-May 2015. The transactions are also anticipated to deliver an additional NAV uplift of approximately £37m over and above the values reflected in the September 2014 balance sheet. This accretion to NAV is expected to be realised in the Group’s results over the next two financial years.
The AGM and the EGM needed to approve these deals will be held in May.
LXB selling up at Biggleswade and Rushden