New site acquisition

RNS Number : 6821I

Big Yellow Group PLC

23 March 2018

 

23 March 2018

Big Yellow Group PLC

("Big Yellow", "the Group" or "the Company")

New site acquisition

We have been indicating to shareholders for some time that we are increasingly focussed on the expansion of our portfolio as the unutilised capacity in our existing stores reduces.

We are pleased to announce the acquisition of a site in Hove for a new 56,000 sq ft store, subject to planning.  Hove is to the west of Brighton and this new store will complement our existing store close to the centre in east Brighton.  This is a site we are particularly pleased with as the Company's management have been tracking it for nearly 20 years in a town where land availability is very limited.

This acquisition, following on from our recent acquisitions in Slough and Bracknell, takes the pipeline (subject to planning) to approximately 620,000 sq ft across ten projects, with a total development cost of £173 million of which £84 million has been spent to date, including site acquisition costs.  Our current estimate of net operating income at stabilisation, at today's prices, for this increase in capacity is in excess of £15 million.  We will continue with our strategy, unchanged since the formation of the business, of developing quality assets in locations where the barriers to entry remain high.

Elsewhere, our 55,000 sq ft store in Central Guildford opened this week, the extension to our store in Wandsworth is due to open in May, and we have commenced construction on our central Manchester store.  We also intend to start fitting our Wapping store in the spring, with an initial footprint of 20,000 sq ft net lettable area, to open in the early Autumn.

Armadillo Self Storage, in which the Group has a 20% interest has recently acquired 1^st Storage Centres, expanding our footprint into the North East with the stores located in Newcastle (59,000 sq ft MLA freehold) and Gateshead (46,000 sq ft MLA long leasehold).  The Armadillo platform now consists of 22 stores with a total capacity of 965,000 sq ft.

James Gibson, CEO commented, "securing sites and procuring planning permissions remains challenging and complex, and there will be setbacks.  Notwithstanding this, we are confident of making progress and we have therefore decided to update the market more regularly with newsworthy events."

Enquiries:

James Gibson Chief Executive Officer                                       01276 477811

John Trotman Chief Financial Officer                                         01276 477811

Teneo Blue Rubicon                                                                  020 7260 2700

Ben Foster         

 

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