In a sale and purchase agreement with the European property fund Kildare Partners, Kungsleden is selling 18 industrial and warehouse properties in 13 municipalities at a total sales price of c. €90.6m (882m SEK) before deduction for deferred tax. Through this transaction, Kungsleden will reach its goal to sell non-strategic properties for a value of circa €200m (2bn SEK)) over the two-year period 2016-2017. As result of the transaction, Kungsleden´s property portfolio will be concentrated to 19 municipalities, in addition to the four priority markets of Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Västerås.
In total, the sales prices in the divestments of non-strategic properties over the two-year period 2016-2017 have been roughly in line with book values.
With today´s divestment, Kungsleden is completing the transformation of its property portfolio. The company will be exiting 9 municipalities and will from now on be focusing its geographical spread to 23 markets including the priority markets of Greater Stockholm, Greater Gothenburg, Greater Malmö and Västerås.
The 18 properties divested have a gross leasable area of just over 277,000 m² and a rental value of c. €11.3m. The legal ownership will be transferred in July of 2017 resulting in Kungsleden foregoing net operating income from the properties for half of 2017.
Biljana Pehrsson, Chief Executive Officer of Kungsleden comments: “We have continued to optimize our property portfolio through intensive and dedicated efforts. With the current transaction, the restructuring of Kungsleden´s property holdings is completed. Our focus from now on will be to extract value and invest in our core portfolio of investment and development properties.”
