AGM Statement
Land Securities Group Plc
12 July 2005
12 July 2005
LAND SECURITIES GROUP PLC ('Land Securities' / 'Group')
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Peter Birch, Chairman, and Francis Salway, Group Chief Executive, will make the
following remarks at the Group's Annual General Meeting to be held today at
11.00 am in The Sainsbury Wing Theatre, The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square,
London WC2N 5DN.
Peter Birch, Chairman:
'It has been a good year for the business, which has been firing on all
cylinders. Since taking the Chair at Land Securities, I have been delighted to
see how the company has been transformed and re-invigorated - how new people
have brought new ideas and new ways of working and how long-standing employees
have adapted and moved with the organisation. That the Group has changed so
much, while remaining true to its core values, is a credit to the organisation
and the people who work there.
'It is also a credit to the executive management team. They have led a team of
some 2,000 people across the UK delivering high levels of activity -
outperforming the industry benchmark, the Investment Property Databank,
completing and letting numerous major development projects, buying and selling
nearly £1.5bn of investment property and winning new property outsourcing
contracts. And, if the year to March 2005 was notable for one event, it was the
£3.2bn refinancing of our business. This transaction has provided the Group
with substantial financial flexibility, given debt holders better rated bonds
and will create an annual cash interest saving of some £25m per annum.
'The actions taken and being taken by the management team continue to deliver
results. Earnings per share (adjusted for the accounting impact of the debt
restructuring) were up some 43.5% and net asset value, even after a 102p
reduction, caused by the debt restructuring, still increased some 9.7%.
'This strong performance has enabled your Board to recommend a substantial
increase in the final dividend this year to 32.85p making a total for the year
of 43.25p, up 16.6%. While we anticipate a more modest growth rate in future,
we are pleased that this will be from the higher base.'
Francis Salway, Group Chief Executive:
'This year on the front of our Annual Report, we posed the question - Property
today: what differentiates a leader from a follower? I hope that you will agree
with me that our strategy and strong financial performance has created a point
of differentiation for Land Securities. I believe that our strategy - which has
focused our activities in areas of the property market where we have advantages
of scale and expertise - has provided us with the competitive positioning to
thrive and grow.
'At the AGM last year we talked about our plans to focus our activities on three
core areas of the commercial property market, Retail property, London offices
and Property outsourcing while retaining the scope for opportunism.
'This restructuring resulted in a further notable event for the Group - the
property swap with Slough Estates. This £700m transaction - and I believe that
it was the largest and first of its kind - saw us exchange the vast majority of
our industrial portfolio for retail property, enabling us to exit successfully
the industrial market and gain a portfolio of retail property with many
attractive opportunities for generating value.
'Across the entire Group, levels of activity were high and remain so. We were
particularly successful in securing major new occupational contracts across all
three of our core sectors. We leased or disposed of more than 1.5 million sq ft
from our London office development programme, secured key anchor store lettings
for our retail development schemes in Exeter and Bristol and won three new
property outsourcing contracts for Land Securities Trillium with Norwich Union,
Barclays and DVLA.
'Since the year-end, we have acquired a number of retail properties through two
key transactions - the purchase of Tops Estates PLC (a shopping centre
investment and development company) and LxB (a specialist private retail
property company). Both of these were corporate acquisitions which we believe
bring a number of benefits to shareholders. As a result, we now own or have a
joint venture interest in 28 shopping centres and 30 retail warehouse parks.
Today we announced a further acquisition of The Fort, Westwood Cross, a 390,000
sq ft out of town shopping centre in Thanet, Kent.
'In terms of the retail market, the rate of growth in retail sales has fallen
but there is still positive growth in sales in absolute terms and we remain
confident in the attractions of good quality retail assets protected by the
tight planning controls found in the UK.
'In London we unveiled our plans for One New Change and have continued to mark
good progress with our development programme and our letting activity - as
demonstrated by today's announcement of a further letting to P&O and our
advanced negotiations with Rentokil for offices at Cardinal Place, the final
phase of which will be completed this Autumn.
'Land Securities Trillium came of age last year, in terms of recognition of the
product by both investors and major occupiers, and also in terms of the 50%
growth in Trillium's operating profit over the year. It is actively preparing
to bid on new contracts this year, including the Government's Building Schools
for the Future programme, the Ministry of Defence London Estate and the Northern
Ireland Civil Estate.
'This is an opportune moment for me to remind you that we will be reporting our
Interim Results later this year under International Financial Reporting
Standards ('IFRS'). Under IFRS, a number of things will change, including the
way in which we have accounted for the debt restructuring, but we will provide a
clear explanation of the changes when we announce our Interims. We will then
also provide a reconciliation to numbers calculated under the current UK GAAP
accounting policies.
'Finally, I would like to comment briefly on progress on the potential
introduction of Real Estate Investment Trusts. Since last year, good progress
has been made by Government and we were very pleased that the Government took on
board many of the comments and suggestions in both our and the industry's
representations when it published its most recent consultation document. This
document outlined some technical issues still to be addressed, to whichwe
responded earlier this year.
'We are now waiting for Government to publish its full proposals. In the right
form, we believe that REITs will make an excellent investment vehicle for
property and will continue the renaissance of property as an asset class.'
For further information, please contact:
Francis Salway/Emma Denne
Land Securities Group PLC
Tel: +44 (0)20 7413 9000
Stephanie Highett
Financial Dynamics
Tel: +44 (0)20 7831 3113
This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange