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(Alliance News) - Big Yellow Group PLC on Tuesday said profit fell in its most recent financial year, resulting from a much smaller gain on revaluation of investment properties.
The self storage company reported a GBP93.4 million pretax profit for its financial year ended March 31, down 26% from GBP126.9 million the year before.
Revenue was 3.1% higher at GBP129.3 million compared to financial 2019's GBP125.4 million. However, Surrey-headquartered Big Yellow made only a GBP23.2 million gain on property revaluation, down 61% compared to a GBP58.9 million gain the year before.
Big Yellow increased its final dividend 1.2% to 16.7 pence per share, taking the total per share for the year up 1.8% to 33.8p from 33.2p.
Executive Chair Nicholas Vetch commented on Covid-19, stating that: "The events of the last few months have doubled down on our strongly held conviction that no management team in any business can confidently predict the timing of these momentous events, all we can assume and know with certainty is that they will happen again."
Vetch said the pandemic means he has no doubt that Big Yellow should be financed conservatively and have only "modest" debt.
After raising GBP79.9 million in a share placing in April, Big Yellow said its current net debt is GBP265 million with GBP162 million in available liquidity.
Between April 1 and Monday this week, Big Yellow has seen 38,000 square feet of occupancy growth, compared to 24,000 square feet a year before, along with 1.4% growth in net rent per square foot versus 0.5% growth year-on-year. Like-for-like occupancy stands at 82%.
In terms of outlook, Vetch said: "Although it has only been a couple of months, the business has so far proved to be relatively resilient through the initial lockdown phase, but as always we caution that we have limited visibility as to future trading patterns.
"In light of the above we will continue with our long-held strategy of building new stores in our core area of activity in London and its commuter towns, where we may see more opportunity in the next few years. We are actively continuing to pursue this external growth strategy, whilst maintaining a conservative capital structure."
Shares in Big Yellow were up 0.5% at 1,058.00p in London on Tuesday morning.
By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com
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