Profits down for growing Safestore
Pre-tax profits fell for Safestore Holdings despite growth in revenue in the six months to the end of April.
The storage group, which has 134 sites including Oldbury and Wednesbury, is to open a new site at Merry Hill, Brierley Hill, in the second half of the year.
Profit was down 53.4 per cent to £38.2 million on revenue up 5.6 per cent to £73.1m.
The fall in profit was driven by reduced gain on investment properties of £7.9m compared to £51.8m a year before.
Occupancy was up 2.2 percentage points to 74.3 per cent.
Chief executive Frederic Vecchioli saod: "Safestore's performance has been robust in the first half of the year and continues to build on the strong earnings and dividend growth achieved over the last five years.
"Since we recommenced our store acquisition and development programme in 2016, we have added 38 stores, including our new store pipeline of three sites in the UK."
Mr Vecchiolo said that going forward Safestore expected to be able to continue to seize consolidation opportunities as well as new development sites that can be turned relatively quickly into new stores.
"The self-storage market remains resilient to macroeconomic uncertainty and we continue to capture growing levels of demand in the UK and in Paris, with double digit new let growth on a like-for-like basis on both markets.
" As we enter our peak trading period we are well-placed to meet this demand with our 1.72 million sq ft of currently unlet, fully invested space, and our pipeline of five stores that will add a further 252,000 sq ft," he added.
