Great Portland Estates hit by writedown

Source: Construction Digital

Date :23/07/2008 10:51:29

The West End property specialist has seen the value of its portfolio drop by £64 million over the past quarter as the market continues to worsen.

The four percent decrease in value saw the company’s property assets fall to £1.54 billion. Great Portland went on to say that net asset value per share slumped 7.6 percent to 538p since March.

Since June last year, the company’s asset value has fallen by a total of 16.2 percent.

However, Great Portland reported that its property sales of £96.6 million were in line with valuations, while new leases were signed at rents 6.1 percent ahead of their March 2008 estimates.

“We have made an encouraging start to this financial year,” said chief executive Toby Courtauld.

“In spite of today’s more challenging market conditions, we continue to deliver operational successes across our business, signing new leases at rents above March rental values and selling profitably.”

“While we expect the economic backdrop to worsen during the balance of this year, we have the ingredients in place to enable our continued out-performance,” he added.