By Bethany Wales
Property firm Londonmetric has sold more than £30m worth of retail units, including an Asda supermarket and two former Cazoo showrooms.
The seven deals, which were worth £31m in total, were earmarked as non-core assets for the London firm, and were acquired in its merger with Alton Towers owner LXi earlier this year.
They included a 106,000 sq ft Asda foodstore in Scotland, sold for £10.5m, a 41,000 sq ft retail park in Ipswich let to Wickes, Topps Tiles, McDonalds and Costa for £10.2m, and two former Cazoo car showrooms in Edinburgh and Cardiff, sold for £6.4m.
The company said it would reinvest the money from the sales into six urban warehouses, which it purchased for a total of £45m, including a 106,000 sq ft warehouse in Cardiff let to Booker, and a 95,000 sq ft warehouse in Milton Keynes let to Ingram Content Group.
Londonmetric CEO Andrew Jones said:“We are delighted to have exited these non-core assets and reinvested the proceeds into much higher quality assets, which offer superior rental growth potential.
“We are continually looking to upgrade the quality of our portfolio and exit lower growth assets outside of our core sectors or those that do not meet our return criteria. As such, we expect to announce further disposals shortly.”
The firm, which is headquartered in London, merged with LXi in January, with the new company boasting an EPRA NTA of approximately £4.1bn, making it the fourth-largest UK REIT.
Its property portfolio has a combined value of £6.2bn and there are expected to be substantial cost and operating synergies.
Since the takeover Londonmetric has been reviewing LXi assets and selling off low-performers.
