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LONDON (Alliance News) - AEW UK REIT PLC said Friday it has been "encouraged" by the resilience of its portfolio value after the UK vote to leave the European Union.
AEW reported that for the six months to October 31 it made a pretax profit of GBP490,000, or 0.42 pence a share.
The net asset value per share of the real estate investment trust stood at 95.47p at October 31, down from 99.03p per share at April 31. The trust's net asset value total return over the period was 3.1%.
Shares in AEW UK REIT were untraded at 97.00p Friday.
During the period the trust raised GBP6.00 million via the issuing of 6.1 million new shares, which it said will be used to expand its commercial UK property portfolio.
"We have now seen two valuation dates since the EU referendum result in June 2016 and are encouraged by how the value of the portfolio has stabilised and by its resilience to market uncertainty. In the period between May 2016 to July 2016, the portfolio valuation fell by 1.81%. In comparison, the capital values of direct properties as measured by MSCI fell by 3% over the same period to July 2016," said Mark Burton, chairman of the trust.
"Although this outcome represented an initial shock to the financial markets, intervention by the Bank of England and government action has somewhat stabilised the event. The board and investment manager are confident that opportunities available to the company will continue to present themselves to enable the company to execute the strategy successfully to deliver profitable growth," added Burton.
By Adam Clark; adamclark@alliancenews.com
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