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(Correcting that it is Circle Property’s intention to liquidate all its remaining assets before the end of its current financial year)
Circle Property PLC on Wednesday said net asset value per share fell in its half year, adding it was its intention to liquidate all of its remaining assets by the end of the financial year.
The UK-focused regional office investment and development company said NAV per share on September 30 was £2.73, down 2.8% from £2.81 on March and marginally down from £2.74 a year prior.
It said it expects NAV per share to continue to fall due to challenging market conditions. It added that an issue of some 918,793 new shares to its executives in October had a negative diluting effect post-period, reducing NAV to £2.64 per share.
Shares in Circle Property were down 4.4% to 214.06p each in London on Wednesday afternoon.
Circle Property is currently conducting an assets disposals programme, intending to liquidate all its assets before the end of the financial year on March 31 2023, so long as there remains interested buyers at ‘respectable’ pricing levels.
This is to maximise returns and deliver value to its shareholders. It declared no interim dividend for the half-year period as a result.
Investment property assets were valued at £27.5 million on September 30, falling from £32.4 million on March 31.
Circle Property said around 60% of its property portfolio by value was disposed of since the programme announcement and during the half-year period.
It completed the post-half-year sale of Elizabeth House in Staines, England to Map Commercial Properties for £3.5 million. This was alongside exchanging contracts for the sale of Somerset House in Birmingham for £15.2 million, expecting completion by the end of February 2023, as well as expecting the £4.5 million letting of K3, Kents Hill Business Park in Milton Keynes to Kuehne+Nagel before the end of December.
It said it remained confident in delivering further asset sales to maximise returns, but added that selling was more difficult than earlier in the financial year due to a more difficult investment market. It added its office portfolio continued to benefit from workers returning to the workplace.
It expects an aggregate value of all disposal prices to be around 95% of March 2022 valuations, when regional office valuations were at their peak.
By Greg Rosenvinge, Alliance News reporter
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