On the market: Singaporean fund keen to sell shares in five NZ malls
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund wants to sell its 49 per cent holding of New Zealand’s biggest shopping centres in a deal valued at $1.4 billion.
Colliers yesterday announced the planned sale but did not mention the vendor.
The Government Investment Corporation [GIC] of Singapore has engaged Colliers and Bayleys’ agents in Auckland to sell its share of malls branded Westfields at Albany, Newmarket, St Lukes, Manukau and Riccarton.
ASX-listed Scentre Group owns
51 per cent of properties and manages the malls that are New Zealand’s most popular, with 13 million annual shopper visits to Newmarket and 10 million shopper visits to Riccarton, according to Scentre’s latest accounts.
Scentre listed these details relating to its holdings in the five New Zealand malls:
• Westfield Albany. Scentre’s 51 per cent valued at $288.2m, recorded total sales of $446.5m for the year to December 31, 2023, annual visits
8.5 million.
• Westfield Manukau. Scentre’s
51 per cent valued at $173.4m, total annual sales $313.8m, annual visits
7 million.
• Westfield Newmarket. Scentre’s
51 per cent valued at $586m, total annual sales $711.9m, annual visits
13 million.
• Westfield St Lukes. Scentre’s
51 per cent valued at $165m, total annual sales $312.7m, annual visits
5.8 million.
• Westfield Riccarton. Scentre’s
51 per cent valued at $283m, total annual sales $588.5m, annual visits 10 million.
In early 2022, the Herald reported NZX-listed Precinct Properties NZ forming a new venture GIC with the potential to become a $1b business.
The new venture bought five assets from Precinct’s existing portfolio in Auckland and Wellington totalling about $590m and had the ability to grow to around $1 billion over time. GIC bought three Wellington and two Auckland assets from Precinct: Defence House, Charles Ferguson Building and Mayfair House in the Capital and Auckland’s 10 and 12 Madden St in the Wynyard Quarter.
In 2015, GIC was reported to be expanding here in various property deals. On the mall front, Scentre has
54 hectares of land and a gross lettable area of 280,000sq m in its properties.
The company owns more than
670ha of land in Australasia, primarily in major population and growth regions, it said.
More than 12,000 shops trade from its 42 locations here and in Australia.
Scentre has “four of the top five shopping centres in New Zealand”, an investor presentation on the ASX in February said.
It did not name it, but Kiwi Property Group’s Sylvia Park is regarded is the fifth top destination.
Scentre has long planned to develop its Albany mall site which is mainly flat asphalt car parking.
In yesterday’s presentation, Albany continues to appear as a development opportunity alongside Australian opportunities.
Scentre says it has A$4b of future developments planned.
On the Singaporeans selling their
49 per cent share, one industry expert said: “It seems a strange time to put something as big as this on the market”.
But bargain assets in Europe and North America might have sparked the deal, he thought.
The five malls produce $2.37b of annual sales, Colliers said.
Buyers can get the 49 per cent holding as one deal or individually with a stake in one mall only.
Richard Kirke and Lachlan MacGillivray of Colliers and Ryan Johnson, Jason Seymour, Chris Maher and Justin Bond of Bayleys in association with Knight Frank are the agents engaged to sell the GIC’s 49 per cent non-management stake in the malls.