Hammerson hit by record loss as pandemic takes toll on retail
THE owner of Birmingham’s Bullring and Bicester Village shopping outlet near Oxford has crashed to its biggest ever annual loss in the wake of the pandemic.
With Covid-19 lockdowns forcing all but essential shops to close, retail landlord Hammerson said its rental income had halved to £157.6m during 2020.
At the same time, the value of Hammerson’s properties plunged by almost one quarter to £6.3bn as the pandemic caused shoppers to shun the High Street and flock online.
The twin declines were the worst in Hammerson’s history and caused its losses to widen from £779m to a record £1.7bn.
As it grappled with the virus crisis, Hammerson raised £532m from investors by selling shares and another £328m from selling assets. That helped reduce its debts from £2.8bn to £2.2bn.
And Hammerson plans to sell more properties in 2021, with £73m already raised from the sale of London’s Brent South Shopping Park and minority stakes in two other centres. However, the firm warned retailers ‘will take time to recover’ even as the economy opened up and that its recovery for now relied on the rollout of vaccines.
Chief executive Rita-Rose Gagne said: ‘The retail sector, already in the grip of major structural change, has been significantly impacted by the restrictions imposed to tackle the pandemic. However, she said, the pandemic had also highlighted ‘how much we all crave human contact’ and predicted shoppers would return to shopping centres.