Charter Hall Retail REIT will tap investors for $50 million through an institutional placement to partly fund its acquisition of two regional shopping centres.
The announcement came as the group unveiled a solid lift in full-year profit.
Charter Hall Retail said the acquisitions -- of Goulburn Plaza in NSW and Katherine Central in the Northern Territory -- were in line with its strategy to acquire supermarket anchored shopping centres with strong income and capital growth potential.
The portfolio of assets will be acquired for a combined acquisition price of $94.9m, or $102m post acquisition costs, which reflects a 7.2 per cent initial yield.
As well as the fully underwritten institutional placement of $50m -- at an offer price of $4.02 per unit -- the purchase will be funded by $21m in net proceeds from the sale of assets in Bathurst, Narromine and Wellington and debt funding of $31m, utilising the increased debt capacity from the group’s recent debt restructure.
Charter Hall Retail REIT shares were placed in a trading halt, pending the announcement to the market. They last traded at $4.18.
In the year to June 30, Charter Hall Retail posted a statutory profit of $162.5m, a 90.7 per cent increase on the previous year's $85.2m.
On an underlying basis, profit rose 29.2 per cent to $172.3m. Statutory profit includes discontinued operations, while underlying excludes them.
Revenue from ordinary activities rose 9.1 per cent to $201.2m.
Operating earnings rose 5.2 per cent to $110.8m.
Charter Hall Retail will pay a final dividend of 13.8 cents per share, which combined with the interim dividend of 13.7c, represents a full-year dividend of 27.5c.
It forecast operating earnings between 30.25 and 30.75 cents per unit for the year ahead, up from 29.7 cents per unit in fiscal 2015.