VGP NV (‘VGP’ or ‘the Group’), a leading European provider of high-quality logistics and semi-industrial real estate, today announces the results for financial year ended 31 December 2019:
Record net profit of €205.6 million, a 69.8 percent YoY increase
Solid business growth across European portfolio
Record signed and renewed rental income of €54.9 million, bringing total signed rental income to € 155.0 million, a 48.9 percent YoY increase
34 buildings with 706,000 sqm under construction at year-end
Owned and secured land bank of 6.21 million xqm – a 39.6 percent YoY increase
Delivered 19 projects with 287,000 sqm of lettable area, representing €15.8 million of annualised committed leases
Start of construction of landmark VGP Park Munich project with several other iconic projects in the pipeline, including Laatzen and Magdeburg
Launched second joint venture with Allianz Real Estate and completed three successful joint venture transactions for a total transaction value of €610 million
Successfully completed a € 150 million bond offering and arranged several multi-year bilateral credit facilities
Intention to propose to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders a distribution of a gross dividend of
€60 million which equates to €3.25 per share – a 47.7 percent YoY increase
VGP’s Chief Executive Officer, Jan Van Geet, said: “We had a busy year as usual in which our committed rental income grew by nearly 50 percent, profoundly changing the scale of our operations as we increasingly reap the benefits of the investments made over the last few years in our growing pan-European platform. Particularly we saw very strong growth in Germany – where we are already active since 2013 but mostly under the radar. However, over the last few months our profile in the German market changed significantly as we launched iconic projects in Munich, Laatzen and Göttingen bearing the fruit of intense cooperation with communities and SME clients over the past few years.”
Jan Van Geet continued: “During the year we made significant investments into our organizational structure as we further aligned our country teams with our pan-European matrix organization and split the COO role – with Jon Watkins joining us from Amazon as COO Western Europe. We reinforced our financial position through a second joint venture with Allianz, a successful €150 million bond offering and new credit facilities. We believe it will be critical to maintain a fortress capital position so we can continue to benefit from investment opportunities as we see land becoming increasingly scarce.
Jan Van Geet added: “We are very confident for the outlook for 2020 as we will construct various pre-let trophy projects already in the pipeline which will support the results this year. Furthermore, we will continue the implementation of our pan-European roll-out and, supported by the foundation of our expanded land bank, we have the ambition to add a lot of new and iconic parks and tenants across the markets we are active in.”
“It is with confidence that we look at 2020 and beyond, as we continue to leverage on the implementation and expansion of our pan-European roll-out. The positive trend in demands for lettable area recorded by VGP during 2019 in combination with the significant increase of our land bank during the last 12 months has laid the foundation for growth over the coming years. VGP expects to be able to continue expanding its rental income and property portfolio through the completion and start-up of additional new buildings in 2020. Development activities should continue to operate at elevated levels during 2020 supported by solid demand from potential tenants. We expect e-commerce to continue to be an important driver for demand across our platform,” said VPG.
“Finally, in respect of partnership with Allianz Real Estate, we expect in the course of 2020 to be able to announce the details of an expansion of our first joint venture beyond the €1.7 billion original target and we anticipate to be able to conduct several closings with the Joint Ventures in the course of this year,” VPG concluded.
