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Safestore has reported an 11.1% increase in its revenue for the six months to 30 April 2021, as it hikes its interim dividend 27.1% to 7.5p.
The increase reflects improved profitability, the company said, as pre-tax profit for the period came up to £167.3 million from £99.7 million in 2020. This was fuelled by strong trading performance and increased gain on investment properties of £127.7 million.
During the period, Safestore opened a 58,500 sq ft freehold store at Birmingham Middleway and a 50,000 sq ft leasehold store in Paris Magenta.
It also has three new development sites and two store extensions in London, as well as five new development sites in Spain in Madrid and Barcelona and a new project in Paris.
The group has unutilised bank facilities of £128m at April 2020 and no maturities before June 2023.
In May 2021 a further £150m of new competitively priced US Private Placement financing was secured and will be drawn in June and August 2021 with an additional available uncommitted Shelf debt facility of around £80m equivalent available, the company said.
Frederic Vecchioli, Safestore's CEO, said: 'We continue to focus on the significant upside from filling the 1.3m square feet of fully invested currently unlet space in our UK, Paris and Spain markets. Including our pipeline stores we have 1.9m sq ft to fill or the equivalent of 45 stores.
'On average over the last six years, the business has grown like-for-like revenue by 7.2% per annum and its total revenue by 9.8% per annum over the same timeframe. Our track record in customer acquisition, occupancy and revenue management, combined with our existing available lettable space, our new store pipeline and self-funding capacity, should allow the business, in the absence of macro-economic disruption, to deliver consistent growth for the foreseeable future.'