London & Stamford report a second year profit of £106 million

London & Stamford Property, the Gurnsey-based investment company founded by property veterans Raymond Mould & Patrick Vaughan today reported on it's second full year of activity.

The company was initially funded by a share placing which raised £247 million and a Bank of Scotland revolving facility of £150 million, but later tapped investors again for a further £219.5 million placing and offer.

It reported a profit this year of £106.1 million, having achieved a valuation uplift of £72.1 million on it's portfolio, and a further £29.8 million from it's Meadowhall joint venture and a net income of £16.1 million from it's assets, which are now worth £600.6 million. It also has cash of £276.6 million.

It has invested in a disparate array of prime assets, which it bought keenly, sufficiently so that it was able to dispose of one in February, No1 Whitehall Riverside Leeds for £51.3million, which it had purchased in May 2009 for £37.6million.

Since it's year end on March 31st. it has acquired the Radial portfolio of 16 distribution warehouses from BoS for £208.5 million this month, using it's BoS facility, which at 80bps over LIBOR will yield a cash return of 18.5% when the unlet units are taken up.

Yields in the open market are now too compressed to be of interest to these veterans, so they intend to work closely with the banks to help them with their work-outs, which is a much safer place to be.

Raymond Mould, the Non-Executive Chairman of London & Stamford Property Limited, said:

"I am very pleased to report our further acquisitions in the year and that we have continued to be able to add prime quality assets with secure income and long unexpired lease lengths to our portfolio. We have however become increasingly cautious over further investment as prime yields tightened to potentially unsustainable levels in what we considered a most demanding tenant environment. I still consider such caution to be well placed and it will continue to underpin our strategy in the future.

Nevertheless, I am delighted that we have been able to continue to acquire prime assets with attractive returns and am particularly pleased to have worked alongside the Bank of Scotland to secure the Radial portfolio. We are continuing to explore exciting opportunities which tend to be for larger lot sizes, including more complex portfolio opportunities where our available equity and the asset management skills provided by our property advisor present the potential to generate further value to our shareholders.

I am also very pleased to confirm that we are now in a position to implement our previously advised strategy to move to the main market of the London Stock Exchange and to convert into a UK Real Estate Investment Trust."

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