Peakside Capital Advisors AG (Peakside) completed transactions totalling around €705 million last year, setting a new record for the European real estate investment manager. The company, which specialises in challenging properties with value-add potential, targets acquisitions of over €500 million in Germany for its Peakside Real Estate Fund III alone.
Peakside’s record-setting deal volume in 2018 comprised seven acquisitions with a combined value of €230 million and the sale of 33 buildings worth approx. €475 million. The deal tally includes the purchase and already largely completed re-sale of an office and retail portfolio consisting of 14 properties, the acquisition of an office portfolio in Frankfurt with 35,000 sqm of total GLA and an investment in a project development in the Adlershof district of Berlin with 30,000 sqm GLA. The largest individual transaction was the sale of the Frankfurt Airport Center I, located directly at Frankfurt Airport Terminal 1, at a price of €168 million. Peakside had acquired the 48,000 sqm office complex in 2017 on behalf of a joint venture.
“2018 was an extremely successful year for us,” says Boris Schran, Founding Partner of Peakside. “Applying our ‘Buy-Fix-Sell’ strategy, we have managed to sign new leases and renewals covering over 77,600 sqm of space, thus significantly bringing down vacancy rates and raising value for our investors.” In addition to numerous lease agreements with small and medium-sized tenants, Peakside signed major leases with ICT service provider operational services GmbH & Co. KG for around 6,000 sqm and with Star Alliance for 3,000 sqm, both in Frankfurt Airport Center I, as well as with German bank Bremer Kreditbank for approx. 1,800 sqm in Theodor-Heuss-Allee 108, an office building in Frankfurt.
Peakside is planning further property acquisitions for 2019, particularly within the German market but also internationally. At the beginning of the year, Peakside already bought a four-star hotel in the business district of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. The 214-room hotel investment will provide a net initial yield of 8.5% to the Adriatic Value Fund, a Slovenian AIF for institutional investors. The transaction marks Peakside’s fourth acquisition on behalf of the fund, which focuses on real estate investments in the countries of former Yugoslavia.
