Sirius reaps rewards from £380m BizSpace buy

Sirius Real Estate has released its first update since buying BizSpace last year. In November, the company paid £245m cash for the flexible workspace business, which equates to an enterprise value of £380m. The acquisition was financed through a combination of existing cash resources and a £137m equity raise. Andrew Coombs, chief executive, said 2021 had been “a transformative year” for Sirius and was marked by “two key firsts” – buying BizSpace and raising a total of €700m through two oversubscribed bond issues. Coombs said the BizSpace deal was “already showing positive momentum in terms of growing rents”. Since buying the business four and a half months ago, rents have grown by 7.5% from £41.9m to £45.1m. Over the same period, occupancy increased to 90.5% from 88.7%, while like-for-like average rate per sq ft rose by 6.5% from £10.98 per sq ft to £11.69 per sq ft. Sirius said this highlighted the opportunity to capture the “major growth seen in rental pricing in the UK industrial property market”. Sirius also converted its UK business into a REIT, with effect from 1 April 2022. As a result the company is longer subject to UK corporation tax on income from its property rental business, or on profit from the disposal of assets. In Germany, recent acquisitions mean that Sirius is sitting on over 1m sq ft of empty space, which it hopes to let soon and significantly boost its €113.7m rent roll. To send feedback, e-mail piers.wehner@eg.co.uk or tweet @PiersWehner or @EGPropertyNews