Intu Asturias is sold as UK malls giant continues to pay down debt

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 28, 2020

Debt-laden property giant Intu has been moving fast to shed assets in order to reduce its massive debt load and the latest move was announced on Tuesday after it exchanged contracts to sell a key Spanish shopping centre.

A joint venture company through affiliates of Intu and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has exchanged contracts to sell Intu Asturias to the ECE European Prime Shopping Centre Fund II for €290 million. Intu’s share of this is €145 million.  

The centre is located in Oviedo, Spain and is the regional retail and leisure destination for the Asturias region with an annual footfall of nine million.

The UK company said the deal will deliver net proceeds to it of around €85 million after repaying asset-level debt, working capital adjustments and taxation. It will use the net proceeds to repay debt with the transaction reducing its loan-to-value number by around 1%. The transaction is expected to complete in the next week.

The company earlier agreed the sale of Intu Puerto Venecia. Between them, the two malls generated €19.3 million in net rental income for the firm.

CEO Matthew Roberts said: "We are pleased to have successfully agreed our second disposal in Spain in the last month. Our number one priority is fixing the balance sheet which includes creating liquidity through disposals. This transaction, along with the disposal of Intu Puerto Venecia, the part-disposal of Intu Derby and other sundry asset sales, brings our total disposals since the start of 2019 to nearly £600 million”.