Banco Sabadell: The company announced at closing an investment of €200 (6% of capitalisation) in Deeplabs, a rental platform in the science and innovation (S&I) segment. The agreement foresees an alliance with Stoneshield to jointly manage a REIT in which new capital will enter to increase the asset base, which will initially be €400 million (of which Colonial holds 90% or the equivalent of 3% of the asset portfolio) but which has the ambition to reach >€2,400 million with an identified pipeline of €700 million in the short and medium term. In the medium and long term, Colonial expects to reduce its stake to below 50% depending on the opportunities and interest from third parties to enter the capital.
According to Colonial, the transaction could increase LTV by one percentage point and have a positive impact on NTA in the short term.
Assessment: Although the transaction is far from transformational, and therefore does not have a significant quantitative impact on Colonial’s shares, qualitatively it does change the focus as it involves a different type of asset (and clearly less known) than the company’s core, which is prime offices. According to Colonial, the investment does not distort the REITs traditional model, given that it has always allocated around 10% of the portfolio to projects under development, such as this one.
