Mazars study in collaboration with ASPIM: financial communication and strategy of "retail" real estate AIFs (OPCIs and SCPIs)
In collaboration with ASPIM, Mazars has carried out a comparative study of the strategies and the key indicators used by "retail" real estate AIFs in their financial communications dated 31 December 2017 and 30 June 2018.
Beyond the comparison of statements of performance for "retail" real estate funds this study reveals three major orientations:
An investment strategy favouring geographical diversification and by type of asset:
- Internationalisation of SCPIs : the relative weight of investments in other countries in Europe has doubled since 2015 and was at 10% at the end of 2017, that is, at over 5 billion euros
- Attractiveness of the health, hotel and serviced residences sectors for OPCIs and SCPIs whose cumulated market value was at over 4 billion euros at the end of 2017
- In their 2017 annual reports 31% of the AIFs in the panel expressed the wish to diversify their investments either in the euro zone (mainly Germany, Benelux and southern Europe) or in new types of assets (particularly in the tourism and leisure industries)
- For the OPCIs in the panel under study, the allocation on the listed property companies represented 1.3 billion euros on 30 June 2018, that is, 10% of their net assets
ESG/SRI/RSE criteria are very present in financial communication:
- Half the AIFs in the panel posted one or several environmental performance measures in their 2017 annual report
- The main environmental performance indicators identified are the energy age of the real estate portfolio, the percentage of the portfolio that has a certificate or a label, average energy performance measured in kW or in grams of CO2 / m²
The debt ratio of funds remains low:
- On the basis of the panel studied, it appears that 70%f the OPCIs and 84% of the SCPIs resort to debt, but the debt ratio is often less than 20%
- At the end of 2017, the debt ratio settled at around 7% for the SCPIs and at 14% for the OPCIs (based on total gross assets)
For further details, please see the full study: "Financial communication and strategy of "retail" real estate AIFs".