“NEPI Rockcastle continues to leverage on its strengths and consolidate its position as the dominant, high-quality shopping centre owner with the most robust management platform in Europe’s highest growth region. We constantly enhance our properties via extension, reconfiguration and modernising capital expenditure, active asset management and marketing activities. We focus on the implementation of technological solutions that would further enhance our CEE leadership and stakeholder value. We continue to pursue a development and acquisition pipeline that improves the overall quality of the portfolio and adds to the business’s long-term sustainability. Our approach balances between pursuing commercial opportunities and maintaining a prudent balance sheet, and we are confident that our dominant position in the CEE will allow us to further grow our business” Alex Morar, CEO.
The Group achieved 29.02 eurocents in distributable earnings per share for the first half of 2019, 9.6% higher than the distribution per share of 26.49 euro cents for the first half of 2018. This increase is due to the effect of acquisitions and developments finalised in 2018, being concentrated around mid-year and the second half of the year. The distributable earnings per share for 2019 are expected to be approximately 6% higher than the 2018 distribution, in line with the guidance issued in February 2019.
The Board of Directors declares a distribution of 29.02 euro cents per share for this period. Shareholders can elect to receive the distribution either in cash or as an issue of fully-paid shares, based on a ratio between distribution declared and the reference price. The reference price will be calculated using a maximum 5% discount to the five-day volume-weighted average traded price, less distribution, of NEPI Rockcastle share on the JSE.