Regional REIT has confirmed that its dividend for Q4 2019 will be paid to shareholders.
The group, which owns a portfolio of predominantly office properties in regional locations in the UK, will pay shareholders 2.55 pence per share on the 9 April 2020.
In a trading update, the company said it had collected most of its rent for the first quarter of 2020, stating it was just 139bps below the same period last year. It added that it was expecting its rents received to increase when a proportion of tenants settle their rental invoice via their scheduled monthly payment run on either 31 March or 1 April.
As at 31 December 2019, the group had a highly diversified portfolio of 160 properties with 904 tenants, which include essential services ranging from the NHS, ambulance service, power utilities, manufacturing to food and logistic related tenants and other government departments.
Regional REIT has drawn down £30.7m of available borrowing headroom from Santander and Royal Bank of Scotland facilities, giving the company around £68.8m in cash reserves.
“We live in very uncertain times. However, the diversity of our property assets and our income streams, together with our singularly focussed, highly experienced and adaptable management team will see us weather the current COVID-19 disruption,” said Stephen Inglis, chief executive of Rgional REIT’s asset manager London & Scottish Property Investment Management.
“Our historically close relationships with our tenants have been an invaluable partnership during the recent events, and our income collection to date and further income to be collected over the next few days, further underpins our view that our collaborative and pragmatic approach works well both in good and turbulent times. We expect to have greater visibility on the extent of the disruption to our operations in due course.”
The company will publish its audited 2019 financial results on 9 April 2020, subject to any further guidance from the regulators.
RGL : Regional REIT to pay dividend