In 2006 Globe Trade Centre S.A. (GTC) achieved a record net profit of USD 253 million. The total portfolio of GTC’s investments – completed, under development or in the pipeline – now comprises 1.45 million square meters of commercial and residential space.
The best results in history
The year 2006 confirmed that GTC continues to accelerate on its growth path – the company achieved record financial results. Revenues from operations amounted to USD 101.5 million – 6% increase from the previous year, achieved despite the sale of 50% interest in Galeria Kazimierz and divestment of Mokotów Business Park. The increase resulted from completion of new office buildings, as well as from residential sales in Warsaw’s Osiedle Konstancja and in Riverloft in Budapest. In 2006 GTC delivered, fully let upon completion, class A office buildings: America House in Bucharest, Topaz in Warsaw, and Centerpoint II in Budapest, and expanded Warsaw’s Galeria Mokotow by 4,000 square meters. In Q4 2006 the Company recorded more than USD 25.3 million of revenues from operations.
GTC achieved even better results on the operating level. The profit from operations amounted to USD 297.6 million and was 52% higher than that in 2005. The net profit increased by 75.9% to USD 253 million in 2006 (vs USD 144m in 2005). In the last quarter of 2006 GTC’s net profit amounted to USD 19 million. “The last year proved again that GTC’s strategy is steering the Company in the right direction. We quite early identified the growth potentials of the most attractive markets in Central and Eastern Europe and established fully operating local structures there, and now we are geared to benefit from booming regional property markets. As a result, fast growing profits and GTC share price translates into increased shareholder’s value ” – says Eli Alroy, Chairman of the GTC Supervisory Board . In 2006 the company’s share price gained 132%, which was the best result among the WIG20 companies.
Also the scale of GTC’s investment expenditures was impressive. In 2006 the company acquired new projects that would allow development 725,000sqm of commercial and residential space. In total investments in land acquisition and development of new projects amounted to USD 266 million ( vs. USD 180 million in 2005).
Expansion accelerates
The last year was extremely successful for GTC, which significantly accelerated its expansion both in Poland and in other Central and Eastern European countries. ‘We have begun operations in three new markets, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Ukraine, and we have bought many plots for investments in other countries in the region,‘ said Hagai Harel, GTC Management Board Member responsible for CEE business development. ‘We have also rebalanced our property portfolio in Poland by selling older office buildings in Warsaw and speeding up new investments in other big cities in Poland.’
At present GTC is developing 260,000 square meters of net space in seven Polish cities, Warsaw, Cracow, Poznań, Wrocław, Katowice, Łódź and Częstochowa. Following Poland, GTC’s second-biggest investment market is Romania, where real estate market has been booming even before the recent EU accession on 1 January 2007. The portfolio of GTC investments in Romania that are completed or under development currently comprises 500,000 sqm of net office, retail and residential space. GTC’s share in these investments is over 300,000 sqm, as some of the projects are joint ventures.
The total portfolio of GTC’s completed, under development or pipeline projects (for which the land have already been purchased) comprises approx. 1.455 millionsqm of net office, retail and residential space.
In total, in 2006 GTC acquired 19 new investments with 725,000 sqm of potential building rights.
There has been a considerable increase in GTC’s activity in the residential sector. GTC’s pipeline comprise 8,000 apartments, of which GTC’s share is 4,300 units and the rest belonging to GTC’s partners in the projects. GTC’s success in the residential development was recognized by the CEE Real Estate Quality Award for Osiedle Konstancja (2nd phase) as the Best Housing Development in Central and Eastern Europe 2006.
GTC’s successful activity in the region has also been acknowledged by real estate experts. In 2006 GTC Romania was awarded the title of Developer of the Year in the South & Eastern Europe Real Estate Quality Awards contest. The Construction and Investment Journal awarded the prize for the Best Office Building and the Best Overall Development in Hungary in 2006 to Centerpoint in Budapest, which was completed in 2Q 2006.
Raising new equity helped to accelerate new acquisitions in 2006. In late March 2006, Globe Trade Centre S.A. successfully completed a secondary public offering, which was significantly oversubscribed, and raised USD 150 million. In December 2006, GTC’s subsidiaries sold Mokotów Business Park office buildings (GTC’s first investment in Poland) to funds managed by Heitman Property Partners. At a price of USD 287 million, this was one of the largest office transactions in the CEE property markets.
In August 2006, GTC conducted a 10-to-1 share split, which helped to improved liquidity, as trading volume in GTC shares grew by more than 60% y-o-yfollowing the split.
GTC’s shares has attracted interest of the leading global institutional investors, while the research coverage has been broadened. Now 10 leading Polish and international brokerage houses publish research report on GTC: CDM Pekao, BDM PKO BP, Unicredito CA IB, ING Securities, Citigroup Investment Research, Deutsche Bank Securities, KBC Securities, HSBC Global Research, and Morgan Stanley Research Europe.