No Abacus Big Enough To Track Property Group's Profit Double

Abacus Property Group have revealed their profits have substantially increased to $191.7 million, according to their recently released half year result.

A large proportion of the rise $76.9 million was the result of valuation gains from the group's investment property portfolio, according to The Age.

“The business continues to perform very well and we have delivered another impressive result in HY17," Abacus Managing Director Dr Frank Wolf said.

"We continue to see reward for our diversified multi-platform business with strong contributions to both underlying profit and NTA from all sides of the business.

"Increased recurring and transactional contributions to underlying profit from our commercial and storage portfolios offset a slight reduction in the quantum of profits from our development projects due to the timing of development realisations after a strong HY16.”
Report highlights

• The Group’s1 consolidated AIFRS statutory profit increased 2.5 times to $191.7 million from $75.5 million in HY16

• Abacus underlying profit2 was $69.5 million, up 22% from HY16 underlying profit of $57.1 million

• 19% improvement in Abacus underlying earnings2 per security 12.2 cents from 10.3 cents in HY16

• Abacus HY17 distribution per security up 2.9% to 8.75 cents

• Distribution payout ratio of 71.5% of underlying profit

• Net tangible assets (NTA) of $2.94 per security, up 10.5%

• Group gearing conservative at 22.7%

• Added over $39.0 million to the self-storage portfolio in the period

• Increased self-storage net lettable area by 12,000m2 or 4.1%

• Self-storage portfolio delivered RevPAM3 growth of 2.2% for the period (4.4% annualised)

• Realised over $80 million in cash from residential developments

• Added 2 office assets to the commercial portfolio totalling $90 million in value

According to The Age, Abacus has continued to add to its storage portfolio through acquisitions. It bought four new assets for $22.0 million, adding 4.1 per cent or 12,000 square metres of net lettable area, taking the entire portfolio to more than 302,000 square metres.

Abacus is sitting on about 9000 units or land lots, mostly in Sydney.

"This provides comfort that the group's exposure to residential apartment and land markets ... should deliver strong returns in the future," Dr Wolf told The Age.

"We believe the market doesn't fully appreciate our high quality assets and their potential that our investment strategies and consistent returns have highlighted is possible."