Strategic divestment and opportunistic buying

November 8, 2016

The past quarter has seen Sentinel continue its strategic divestment of assets, capitalising on the growing weight of capital that is actively chasing properties in our chosen sectors.

Neighbourhood shopping centres, in particular, are in strong demand and we have bought very well in this market in key regional locations. We identified this asset class at a time when it was unloved by others but it is now very much back in favour and attracting plenty of attention from buyers, including the large listed funds.

As a result, Sentinel continues to receive offers to acquire our retail assets and we have completed a number of sales that have delivered strong capital returns for our investors. Our recent sales of shopping centres at Jimboomba in QLD and Narromine and Wellington in NSW bring the total number of properties that have now been sold across the entire Sentinel property portfolio to 10, from the 51 properties that we have purchased since Sentinel was established in 2010. There will be more property sales as half of our responsibility to investors is to buy at the right time and the other half is to sell at the right time. We will continue to ‘take money off the table’ as the opportunities arise to maximise returns for investors. Whilst we are a seller, we also remain an active opportunistic buyer. We have several new properties that are currently under Due Diligence, including in new strategic locations for us that have not yet been identified by others. It is important to remember that our new Investment Opportunities continue to sell-out very quickly upon release. Our recent investment offering of an office building in Newcastle NSW was oversubscribed in just hours following a special pre-release to those investors who had received money back from recent asset sales. Our latest offering of a neighbourhood shopping centre in Port Hedland WA, to be held in the Sentinel Countrywide Retail Trust, was also quickly oversubscribed following its release to existing Countrywide investors only following the recent sales of the Coles assets at Narromine and Wellington. The demand for Sentinel’s offerings has only intensified as those who have received money back from the sale of properties seek to re-invest funds into other trusts. Investors therefore need to continue to act promptly upon the release of new Investment Opportunities.