Shopping centre owner Intu has published results for the period from 1 July to 5 November when its says Company Voluntary Arrangements (CVAs, which allow businesses to keep trading while negotiating with creditors) were “slightly worse than expected”.
It said letting activity in the third quarter slower than forecast and it now expects like-for-like net rental income for 2019 will be down by around 9%, with more than half the reduction coming from the impact of CVAs such as Arcadia and Monsoon.
Even so, chief executive Matthew Roberts was upbeat.
“In the last quarter, we have continued to face challenging market conditions along with the rest of the sector. In particular, CVAs were slightly worse than expected. In the face of these challenges, there is much that gives me confidence about Intu.
“Many of our top customers are global, well capitalised businesses and having visited 17 Intu centres in recent weeks, there is a very different feeling on the ground to the one we read about regularly”.
But, he said that the business was considering “all options” to deal with its debt. “These options include disposing of assets, where we are in the advanced stages of selling two of our Spanish assets, through to raising equity, which is also likely to form part of the solution,” he said.
Leave a Comment