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(Alliance News) - Supermarket Income REIT PLC on Tuesday upped its annual dividend, and increased its target for the next financial year following a strong trading period.
For the year to the end of June, the retail-focused property investor reported pretax profit of GBP10.6 million, rising sharply from GBP620,000 the year before.
Rental income more than doubled to GBP17.2 million from GBP8.9 million, buoyed by a considerable rise in long leasehold properties to GBP13.0 million from GBP5.4 million.
As at June 30, Supermarket Income's portfolio had a value of GBP368.2 million, a 39% rise from GBP264.9 million the same date the year before.
During the period, the trust acquired two supermarket properties for GBP96.7 million in total. As at the end of June, Supermarket's portfolio has eight properties in total.
As a result of the portfolio value rise, the trust's net asset value edged up by 1.0% to 97 pence per share from 96p the same date the prior year.
Supermarket Income declared a total dividend per share for the year of 5.6 pence, up 1.8% from 5.5p the year before, and for its 2020 financial year has targeted a 3.6% increase to 5.8p.
"We have continued to implement our highly specific investment strategy and deliver on our performance targets. In an extremely challenging market for retail commercial real estate, I am pleased that our focused strategy of investing solely in grocery assets is being recognised by the market," said Chair Nick Hewson.
"The contracted RPI rental growth in all of our leases also means that we are able to announce our intention to again raise our dividend target from October 2019 by RPI. We are committed to providing investors stable, long-term, inflation-protected income, supported by a compelling real estate opportunity," Hewson added.
Shares in Supermarket Income REIT were up 0.9% at 106.98 pence on Tuesday.
