Shopping centre giant Intu has reported a £2bn loss for its last financial year and warned it is at risk of going under if it cannot raise more funds.
The owner of shopping centres including the Trafford Centre and Lakeside posted a loss of just over £2bn for the year ending December 31, 2019, and warned its financial statement “indicates a material uncertainty in relation to Intu’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
However, the landlord said it had options, including selling more assets, refinancing its debt and negotiating with lenders.
Intu has been hit hard the spate of retailer administrations and CVAs last year, which have in turn forced the institutional landlord to write down the value of its centre portfolio by £2bn.
The book value of its shopping centre portfolio dropped 22% to £6.6bn.
In a statement to the City, Intu said: “We have options including alternative capital structures and further disposals to provide liquidity and will seek to negotiate covenant waivers where appropriate. These would address potential covenant remedies and the upcoming refinancing activities, with the first material debt maturities in early 2021.”
Only last week the landlord was forced to abandon a £1.3bn emergency cash call due to what it called “extreme” market conditions.
Intu said it would expect its like-for-like net rental income to be down for 2020, by a lower amount than the 9.1% in 2019.
The landlord said it was almost monitoring the “rapidly evolving” coronavirus situation, but said footfall for the beginning of the year had been “broadly unchanged”.
2 Readers' comments