Landlord Yew Grove says its tenants paying almost all rents due this quarter
Irish stock market-listed office landlord Yew Grove - which has offices and industrial buildings in Dublin, Cork Airport, and Waterford IDA Park -- said it performing well in the Covid-19 economic storm in having collected almost all of the rent due from its company tenants.
However, Yew Grove -- which as so-called Reit enjoys favourable tax status -- has around a third of its buildings leased to Irish government agencies and over half to multinationals, areas which have been little affected by the Covid-19 fallout. It also has little exposure to non-food retail tenants in the shops that it leases out.
With a rent roll of €9m at the end of last year, the Reit is relatively small but is still some sort of bellwether for the Irish commercial market during the crisis.
Its assets include buildings in the Dublin suburbs, in Cork and Dublin airports, Waterford, Athlone, as well as a number of buildings in Naas. Its property holdings were valued at the end of 2019 at around €116m.
However, like most Irish stock market property companies -- and the Irish banks -- the shares trade at a hefty discount.
In Yew Grove’s case, its shares are trading at 90c, down from 98c at the start of the year before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, and 2.5% lower from a year ago, valuing the company at just over €100m.
Launched on the Irish market in 2018, its shares hit an all-time low of 84c late last month.
The shares of rival property Reit companies listed on the Irish stock market have also suffered badly -- before and during the Covid-19 crisis.
Shares in office landlord Hibernia Reit have lost 19% of their value in the past year and is now valued at €748m.
Ires Reit -- which rents out apartments -- has lost 12.5% of its value in the past year and is now valued by the stock market at €717m.
In an update on rent collection yesterday, Yew Grove said it had collected 97% of the rents which were due in the three months to the end of June, more than it had anticipated in an earlier update in mid-April.
“This includes all of the monthly rental payments due in the quarter,” it said.
“The company has agreed a temporary rent deferral with a repayment plan on an additional 1.9% of the unpaid balance, bringing the total to 98.9% in due course, with the remainder due from non-food retail outlets which have been closed and are expected to reopen soon and with whom we have begun discussions,” it said.
It plans its next update on its expectations for rent collection for the third quarter early next month.
When set up its mission statement was to focus on property outside of the Dublin's commercial and business district, major towns and cities across the country which were expected to benefit from inward investment under the Government's long-term infrastructure investment, called Project Ireland 2040; as well as in IDA business and technology parks.
As with most property firms, no single building would account for more than a quarter of its assets.
