Growth in Liberty International profit remains on track.

Posted On Thursday, 13 February 2003 10:01 Published by eProperty News

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Cape Town - Liberty International, the UK retail property and shopping centre group, showed more steady growth in the year to December.

Cape Town - Liberty International, the UK retail property and shopping centre group, showed more steady growth in the year to December, with profit before exceptional items up 9 percent to P86.6 million, managing director David Fischel said yesterday.

The group, which has a secondary listing on the JSE Securities Exchange, said its total dividend grew 4.4 percent to 23.75p after a final dividend of 12.5p was declared.

The total return for the year - net asset value per share growth and dividend - was 10.6 percent before taking into account a share placing last November. Earnings a share before exceptional items were up 4.5 percent to 25.58p.

Fischel said good growth in underlying profit was underscored by a P425 million pipeline of new developments and many more opportunities meant 'growth and expansion will continue'.

Liberty is the first major UK property group to report its annual results this year. With six of the group's nine completed shopping centres ranking among the top 15 in the UK, it is not easy to compare with other companies.

New development opportunities include major new shopping centres at Cardiff and Oxford, plus extensions within many of Liberty's existing centres.

On December 23 last year Liberty International was included in the FTSE 100 index of leading listed companies by market capitalisation at 89.

Since then the ranking has improved to 79, although, as Fischel commented, some of the improvement had been due to other companies falling out of the FTSE.

The debt-to-asset ratio was constant at 40 percent at year-end. Debt stood at P1.89 billion compared with P1.7 billion at the end of the 2001 financial year. The cash balance was P72 million and unused bank facilities amounted to over P500 million.

Shareholder funds increased to P2.68 billion after the net proceeds of a share placing realised P157.5 million and a revaluation surplus of P177.5 million.

Fischel said retailer sales growth at Liberty subsidiary Capital Shopping Centres in 2002 had exceeded the average non-food sales growth of 4 percent. Sales growth at up-market centres had been particularly resilient.

The Braehead shopping centre, in its fourth year of trading, continued with a double-digit retailer sales growth, while sales at Uxbridge showed double-digit growth over a comparable nine months.

The catchment areas of Liberty's shopping centres reach a third of the UK's population.

The shares closed 30c down at R76.20 in Johannesburg yesterday.
Publisher: Business Report
Source: Edward West

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