Charter Hall ends financial year as top performing property group
Charter Hall’s share price rose 70.4% over the course of the 2013 financial year making it the top performing major listed property trust.
The group has around $10 billion of funds under management across the office, retail, industrial and residential sectors.
It’s most recent significant transaction was to form a partnership with a local super fund and a Canadian pension fund to acquire Bankwest Place and the associated Raine Square shopping centre in the Perth CBD for $458 million, seeing off competition from both local and offshore investors.
Charter Hall has also been named as a bidder for a collection of assets worth around $250 million that make up the Australand Wholesale Property Fund No.6 (AWPF6).
Charter Hall’s share price closed at $3.87 last Friday having started the financial year at $2.27.
The S&P ASX200 XPJ index (A-REIT sector) was up 17.4% for the 2013 financial year on a share price basis, says Goldman Sachs A-REIT analyst Andrew MacFarlane.
"If you include dividends (total return) then the accumulation index was up 24.2%," he says.
Top five performing A-REITS over 2013 financial year.
Company | ASX Code | June 30/2012 share price | June 30/2013 share price | %change |
Charter Hall | CHC | $2.27 | $3.87 | 70.4% |
Cromwell Property Group | CMS | $0.69 | $0.975 | 41% |
Australand | ALZ | $2.47 | $3.48 | 40.8% |
GMG | $3.67 | $4.88 | 32.9% | |
MGR | $1.27 | $1.61 | 26.7% |
Other strongly performing property stocks were the Cromwell Property Group (share price up 41%) despite its chief executive Paul Weightman warning in March of a commercial property bubble building in Australia, take-over target Australand (up 40.8%), industrial A-REIT Goodman Group (32.9%) and diversified group Mirvac (26.7%).
Australia’s biggest A-REIT Westfield Group and its shopping centre spin-off Westfield Retail Trust ended the financial year up 20.4% and 8.7% respectively.
For the financial year, the share market ended the year up 17.2%