23 February 2022, 7:00am, Antwerp, Belgium: VGP NV (‘VGP’ or ‘the Group’), a European provider of high-quality logistics and semi-industrial real estate, today announces the results for the financial year ended 31 December 2021:
- Record net profit of € 650.1 million, a 75.2% YoY increase
- Strong business growth across the portfolio
- Signed and renewed rental income of € 79.7 million, bringing total signed rental income as of Dec 2021 to € 256.1 million, a 38.3% YoY increase
- Strong letting activity continued into 2022
- A record 1,478,000 m² under construction at year-end
- Land bank expanded to 10.94 million m² – a 43.0% YoY increase, despite significant consumption due to expansion of construction works
- A record 652,000 m² of lettable area delivered, representing € 32.0 million of annualised committed leases (entire completed portfolio is 99.4% let)
- The total capital expenditure for the Group over 2021 (including capital expenditure related to Joint Ventures projects) amounted € 743 million
- based on the predominantly pre-let construction pipeline CAPEX for 2022 is expected to be well above 2021 level
- Year-end gearing ratio amounts to 29,8%
- Intention to propose to the Annual Meeting of Shareholders a distribution of a gross dividend of
€ 149.6 million which equates to € 6.85 per share – an 87.7% YoY increase – and gross dividend yield of 2.94% versus last close
VGP’s Chief Executive Officer, Jan Van Geet, said: “VGP reported solid results benefiting from elevated leasing activity, rental growth and compression in valuation yields. Like in previous years, we have been able to consistently enlarge our land bank in-line with our growth, yet, with nearly 40% of projects acquired last year being brownfield, we continue to place our clients closer to their clients and customers and help improve their supply chain efficiency and last mile delivery. The demand for new space witnessed into 2022 continues to be healthy and we remain optimistic on the outlook for this year as business sentiment is upbeat and secular shifts point towards elevated demand for the coming period driven by consumer shift towards ecommerce, supply chain optimization strategies and transition towards sustainable operations across industries and logistics.”
Jan Van Geet continued: “I would like to particularly thank my team for their devotion, enthusiasm and energy. Everybody contributed to our achievements of last year. Our team has grown together with our company and today we can rely on a deep bench of experienced professionals offering technical in-house know-how on design and engineering of advanced semi-industrial and e-commerce facilities, without having to rely on general contractor or external engineers and consultants.”
Jan Van Geet concluded: “We have managed to significantly strengthen our fortress balance sheet in the course of 2021 and due to the two bond issuances we have our financing needs for 2022 covered, despite a significantly larger capex anticipated in 2022 versus last year due to our predominantly pre-let construction pipeline.”