Micha,
Many thanks for your enquiry.
As you are no doubt familiar, we are a company that has a very strong track record in making well-researched purchases, improving our assets and managing them in a way which drives value for our shareholders. We have generated steadily rising dividends now for 26 years.
While we saw some negative impact on our share price following our announcement that we were in exclusive negotiations to acquire the Woluwe shopping centre, we are confident that this is an excellent and high quality centre with significant potential for improvement in the future. Moreover, it will be earnings accretive from the point of acquisition.
We are continuing to operate our asset rotation programme and in the past couple of months we completed the sales of Mellby (Sweden), and rue de Rivoli (France). More sales will follow over the coming months and year.
This programme is generating cash for us to reinvest in the growth of our portfolio - not just to support acquisitions, but also to invest in strong pipeline we have of potential investment projects at our existing centres (for example the potential to extend and refurbish). Last week, we opened the newly extended and refurbished Hallarna centre in Sweden (formerly known as Eurostop), which has reported very strong initial sales. Our C4 centre in Sweden is under construction and remains on track to open next autumn, and is already 80% let to a roster of strong retailers.
All of the above leads us to be very positive about the future of the company and we are working hard to deliver these projects.
Next week we are hosting our AGM in Amsterdam on Tuesday and will announce our first quarter results on Friday. Please do keep in touch with us, all information will be available on our website.
Best wishes,
Anna