Warehouse REIT to raise £100m to expand its portfolio

Warehouse REIT announced the proposed issue of further ordinary shares on Tuesday, to raise gross proceeds of up to £100m, via a placing, open offer and offer for subscription.

The AIM-traded company said it had successfully deployed the £150m of equity capital raised at its initial public offering in September 2017 and as a result on 5 March this year it announced that it had been contemplating an equity raise to fund further investments in line with its investment policy.

It said the transaction would involve the issue of up to 97,087,378 new ordinary shares pursuant to a placing, open offer and offer for subscription, targeting gross proceeds of approximately £100m.

Qualifying shareholders were being offered the opportunity to participate in the open offer of up to 66,400,000 new ordinary shares on the basis of two new shares for every five existing shares.

Warehouse REIT said qualifying shareholders were also being offered the opportunity to subscribe for new ordinary shares in addition to their open offer entitlement under the excess application facility.

The board said it had also reserved the right to increase the size of the issue by up to 24,271,844 new ordinary shares.

The issue price was 103p per share, representing a discount of 2.6% to the net asset value per ordinary share as at 30 September, and a premium of 2.0% to the closing price per share on 11 March.

“The company has made impressive progress since its AIM listing 18 months ago, having delivered, ahead of target, on its investment strategy to provide shareholders with a high quality portfolio of well-located urban warehouse assets,” said Warehouse REIT’s chairman Neil Kirton.

“Active management, reflected in lettings successes, many of which have been achieved ahead of ERV, is helping to drive portfolio income and has supported us in achieving our target dividend.”

Kirton said that, with “robust and growing” income streams from a focused investment into UK multi-let warehouse properties, the next phase for the firm would be to scale the portfolio as it continued to both source and attract compelling deal flow within the asset class.

“Having carefully considered all funding options in order to grow, we believe that this potential share issue would be in the best interests of shareholders and the success of the company as a whole.”