Charter Hall completed more than $1.1 billion in development projects last financial year and grew its pipeline to more than $8.8 billion in its 30th year of operation.
Charter Hall chief executive David Harrison said 40 per cent of the record $10-billion transactions were sale and leaseback arrangements during the 2020-21 financial year, 24 per cent of which was in the food and staples retailing sector.
“We continue to partner with tenants and investors to unlock investment opportunities … [and] our develop-to-core strategy also saw us deliver over $1 billion in development completions,” Harrison said.
“As we begin financial year 2022 we are well positioned with $6.7 billion of investment capacity to deploy into our $8.8 billion development pipeline, which will be further advanced with continuing equity inflows.”
Charter Hall’s pipeline is made up of $3 billion in industrial projects and $5.3 billion in the office sector.
Harrison said development activity was predominantly undertaken in partnership with projects that had been de-risked through pre-leasing and fixed-price building contracts.
He said about two-thirds of office developments currently under construction were pre-leased at the end of June, and 94 per cent of industrial and logistics projects had been pre-leased.
Charter Hall’s property investment portfolio increased 18.8 per cent to $2.4 billion and generated a 15 per cent total property investment return and an 83 per cent weighting to Australia’s east coast markets.
Despite a tough year Charter Hall reported a portfolio occupancy rate of 97.4 per cent with a weighted average lease expiry of 9.1 years, an increase from 8.7 years in FY20, reflective of its diversified tenants including the Australian government which makes up 14 per cent of its rents.
The group’s funds under management grew 29 per cent or $11.7 billion in FY21 to a total of $52.3 billion.
Harrison said the $5.9-billion program of acquisitions had driven the increase in managed funds, in addition to the positive $4.1-billion revaluations of assets and a $1.8-billion capital expenditure on developments.
“As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we are proud to have created an Australian funds management business of scale by global standards, but most importantly, we have generated record fund inflows, gross transactions and funds under management growth of $11.7 billion in FY21,” Harrison said.
“Our success as a business is built upon partnering with our tenant and investor customers to drive mutually beneficial outcomes with a razor-sharp focus on being customer centric.”
Article Source: www.theurbandeveloper.com