LISTED property loan stock company Pangbourne Properties, which is predominantly an industrial-focused property company, reported on Friday that its distributions had increased 10,6% to 52c for the six months to December.
Pangbourne CEO Craig Hutchison said the company was “very happy with the double-digit growth”.
“We feel we are well positioned with a low borrowing level of 30% of total assets and that will give us scope to take up opportunities in the property market.”
He said Pangbourne had also secured some “high-quality land” that it would consider developing in the future.
Hutchison said the company would develop 50000m² of new industrial space at Wesbank Raceway, southeast of Johannesburg. Pangbourne had also acquired the old abattoir property site in City Deep, south of Johannesburg, and would redevelop it. “We are putting up 150000m² of industrial space (at City Deep).”
Hutchison said there was no available land for industrial development and there was a shortage of industrial space.
“These developments are going to do very well,” he said.
Pangbourne had record occupancy levels of 97,5% in its industrial property portfolio.
The company said that one of the highlights for the period was the acquisition of 63,3% of Calulo Property Fund. “It is management’s intention to utilise Calulo as a foundation for the launching of Pangbourne’s focused office fund,” said Pangbourne.
Pangbourne has strategic stakes in sister listed property companies iFour Properties, Siyathenga Property Fund and Calulo. IFour contains a mix of property types, while Siyathenga is focused on the retail property market. Pangbourne wants Calulo to be the Pangbourne stable’s office property fund.
Pangbourne said a quality office portfolio of about R500m was expected to be sold into Calulo before June.
Pangbourne said it had a pipeline of high-quality industrial, office and retail developments totalling R1,5bn.
“The completion of these developments is expected to take place over a period of 24 months. All these developments improve the quality of the portfolio and the ability of the fund to grow distributions,” said the company.
Pangbourne said it would on-sell the retail and office developments to the Pangbourne-associated specialised property funds on an arm’s-length basis.