Consus Real Estate continuing reducing cost of borrowing and streamlining Group structure
Berlin – 27 November 2020. Consus Real Estate AG (“Consus”, ISIN DE000A2DA414, CC1), a leading property developer in Germany’s top 9 cities, today released its figures for the first nine months of 2020.
Theo Gorens, member of the Management Board of Consus, comments: “In face of the Covid-19 pandemic, we successfully achieved important strategic and operating milestones in the first nine months of 2020, in particular optimizing our development portfolio, streamlining our group structure and significantly reducing our cost of borrowing by substantially refinancing expensive mezzanine debt.”
Resilient Q3 performance of the business despite Covid-19
Covid-19 had a significant impact on our operating environment. However, Consus continued to operate through the challenges and achieved some major milestones. Total income of € 705.6 million increased year-on-year by 34.4%. Our key performance indicator, EBITDA pre-PPA and pre-one-offs (Adjusted EBITDA), reached € 193.2 million leading to an adjusted EBITDA pre-PPA margin of 27.4%. LTM Adjusted EBITDA reached € 252.5 million, reflecting the challenging economic conditions in 2020. Expensive mezzanine debt was reduced by approx. € 400m year-to-date, reducing the average interest rate materially.
Closing of acquisition of large-scale Düsseldorf project
The closing of the acquisition of the large-scale development project ‘Grand Central’ in the city center of Düsseldorf resulted in a GDV increase of € 0.6 billion. Pro-forma for the announced upfront sales from May 2020, the GDV of the portfolio will be € 8.6 billion across 40 projects. Consus’ development portfolio is almost exclusively located in Germany’s top 9 cities, with 92% of GDV in Germany’s top 7 cities.
Execution of ADO Properties call option
On 29 June 2020, ADLER Group S.A. (formerly ADO Properties S.A.) (“ADLER”) announced that it had exercised its call option to acquire control of Consus followed by an announcement on 6 July 2020 that they had successfully closed the call option and acquired control with a current stake of approx. 65%.
Streamlining of Group structure
In line with the ongoing integration of operations and streamlining of its Group structure, Consus completed the acquisition of the remaining 25% minority stake (on a fully diluted basis) in Consus RE AG (formerly CG Gruppe AG) (“Consus RE”) in July 2020. Subsequently, Consus RE became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Consus and its legal structure was converted to a limited liability company (GmbH) as a further milestone to optimize and simplify the group structure.
Coronavirus update
The second wave of the Coronavirus pandemic infections started in Q3 2020. Consus cannot conclusively assess the effects on Consus from the impact on the overall economic and industry-related developments by the coronavirus. Consus will continue to assess any potential macro-economic and industry-related impacts as well as any impact on the Group’s business, either directly or from reduced economic visibility, and will update the market as appropriate. Consus continues to believe that German residential real estate will prove to be one of the most robust asset classes despite the ongoing pandemic.