Last checked at 
LONDON (Alliance News) - Capital & Regional PLC, a specialist UK shopping centre real estate investment trust, on Wednesday lifted its dividend guidance after an increase in operating profit in the first half.
Capital & Regional, which has a portfolio of community shopping centres, said it now expects to pay a dividend of at least 3.0 pence per share for 2015 as a whole. It had previously guided a dividend of at least 2.9p. It increased its interim dividend to 1.5p from 0.35p.
Operating profit increased to GBP11.8 million in the six months to the end of June, compared with GBP6.7 million in the corresponding half the prior year.
"Our hands-on approach to asset management, combined with improving economic conditions for our retailers and leisure operators, have driven both letting and occupancy across our portfolio," Chairman John Clare said in a statement.
This provides a sound platform to deliver future growth through the capital expenditure programme supporting our existing portfolio, as well as through the acquisition of retail assets where we can see potential to grow income, such as the Buttermarket Centre in Ipswich," Clare said.
Capital & Regional said it expects a "significant increase in momentum in delivery" of its capital expenditure programme in the second half.
The company said it is confident that "the asset management initiatives across the portfolio will deliver very attractive returns".
"We anticipate that further increases in property valuations will be driven primarily by growth in income and repositioning of the shopping centres even if there still remains some scope for yield compression particularly for shopping centres in London," the company said.
"We are also reviewing a number of investment opportunities with our focus on those where we can utilise our asset management skills to generate attractive returns based on the repositioning of the underlying scheme," the company added.
Shares in Capital & Regional were up 1.1% at 65.21 pence on Wednesday morning.
By Samuel Agini; samagini@alliancenews.com; @samuelagini
Copyright 2015 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
