Big Yellow H1 pretax profit falls 22%
Big Yellow has reported a 22% fall in its pretax profit for the first half of its financial year due to a lower revaluation surplus.
Pretax profit for the six months ended 30 September 2018 fell to £61.4m, compared with £78.7m for the first half of last year at the self-storage group.
Earnings per share also dropped to 38.8p for the first half of the financial year, compared with 50.0p at the end of the first half of 2017.
Big Yellow has reported a 22% fall in its pretax profit for the first half of its financial year due to a lower revaluation surplus.
Pretax profit for the six months ended 30 September 2018 fell to £61.4m, compared with £78.7m for the first half of last year at the self-storage group.
Earnings per share also dropped to 38.8p for the first half of the financial year, compared with 50.0p at the end of the first half of 2017.
Big Yellow delivered a 7% hike in like-for-like revenue in the first half, however, by increasing the occupancy rate across its portfolio and driving rental growth.
This saw it turn in a 16% increase in cash flow from operating activities, which came in at £34.6m, and adjusted profit of £33.3m – up 9%.
Executive chairman Nicholas Vetch said: “We have continued to grow our like-for-like occupancy to 84.9% (up 3.4 percentage points from 81.5% at 31 March 2018) and remain focused on our core objective of 90% across the portfolio.
“As we have reduced vacant capacity, our pricing model is delivering improved rental growth and we are pleased to have achieved growth in average net rent of 3.7%.”
Big Yellow currently has a pipeline of 11 development sites, which will provide 680,000 sq ft of storage space, with a completion cost of around £100m in addition to the £23m of capital expenditure in the first half of the 2018 financial year.
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