Mid-week ASX property wrap up: 5 May

• ASX hits 100 day high, trading above 7100 for most of the Wednesday
• Top property performers continue to include PTG
• Vitalharvest has accepted MAFM offer at $1.26

The mid-week ASX wrap welcomes you to the quietest Wednesday since the series began.

Today, only three pieces of news hit the market from ASX listed real estate companies, two change of director notices from Finbar (Mr John and Ronald Chan), and Charter Hall Retail REIT announced Milford Asset Management Limited had become a substantial holder with 5.01% voting power (28,732,020 ordinary shares).

The broader market

The ASX is hitting new highs again, this time, 100 day highs. In last week’s wrap, the market reached 7082.3, the highest the market had been in a year, today it was trading above 7100 late morning and across most of the afternoon. It is now trending lower, just a touch under 7100.

At the time of publication, the market was trading at 7102.40

So far today, the top performers for real estate companies are:

Top-performing ASX listed real estate companies

Source: ASX

The movement

Monday kicked off with news that Vitalharvest (ASX: VTH) would accept the Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management (MAFM) proposal for takeover. The latest offer from MAFM which has now been accepted by VTH is for $1.26 per unit in a trust scheme takeover or $348 million in an asset sale alternative should unitholders vote against the first option.

When The Property Tribune reported on the Monday movement, Vitalharvest shares were on the up, trading at $1.28. It then peaked at $1.30 that day, moving down to $1.26 on Tuesday and is now trading at $1.27.

A number of other quarterlies were also released, Elanor (ASX: ECF) reported $6.3 million in funds from operation with dividends distributed at 12.5 cents per security.

Vicinity Centres (ASX: VCX) also released its quarterly report, the company still feeling the effects of pandemic. The outlook is promising though, the company still reporting high occupancy rates of 98% and seeing gradually increased sales across the board. Although not all numbers were in the black quite yet, the smaller losses and reduced drops are a positive sign for the company. Notable items were the almost 12% increase in discount department store sales compared to 22.4% drop in department stores, whilst DFO assets were on the up at 2.9%.

Dexus (ASX: DXS) also released its Q3 report card. Following the big movements earlier this year including a structure simplification and merger with AMP’s Capital Diversified Property Fund (ADPF), the company is now reporting the wholesale property fund is outperforming its benchmark over 3, 5, 7 and 10 years. Occupancies crept downward by about one per cent depending on the metric (occupancy by income was 95.4% and by area was 94.8% compared to 96% in both metrics in the half-yearly results). The company also saw buoyed industrial property occupancies up some 2%-3%.

On Monday, Ingenia (ASX: INA) announced a spending spree, $40 million from the company’s 2020 equity raise was used to purchase three holiday parks in Victoria, one each in Queensland and NSW, and 16 hectares of land in Queensland for development as a lifestyle community.

In other ASX listed real estate news, large format retail company Aventus (ASX: AVN) successfully completed $660 million of debt refinancing, representing 80% of the current debt portfolio ($820 million).

Garda Diversified Property Fund (ASX: GDF) also settled its Varsity Lakes divestment which was originally announced mid-April for $12.6 million.

In last weeks mid-week wrap, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) became a substantial holder in Peet Limited (ASX: PPC) and then ceased to be a substantial holder a day later. This week on Tuesday, PPC announced MUFG had done the same thing again, movements which likely indicates hedging on the company. It comes as the company reports a 68% increase in share prices since last year, but as Yahoo Finance reported, the figure is 12% down from the last three years.

That’s all for one of the quieter mid-week reports, indeed the quietest day so far.