Irish market yields £5m profit for UK property group U&I

UK property group U&I made a profit in Ireland of £5 million in the year to the end of February and has forecast a surplus for this year of £4 million from its various projects in Ireland.

The profit last year related to the sale of the Charlemont Clinic site in Dublin 2 and activity at its Robswall residential project in Malahide. The company had originally projected a gain of £10 million but the profit from its development at Percy Place in Dublin was deferred until this year due to a delay in its sale.

Profits this year will be derived from the sale of Percy Place, further activity at Robswall, and the disposal of a small asset on Pembroke Road in Dublin.

Results

Annual results published by the group on Thursday show that Dublin makes up about 16 per cent of U&I’s development and trading portfolio. It had £38.8 million worth of assets located in Ireland at year end.

This included an interest in the Vertium office building on Burlington Road, which is being developed in partnership with Paddy McKillen, Johnny Ronan and Colony Capital.

U&I's chief executive Matthew Weiner told The Irish Times that it remains an interested buyer of Irish property, especially as "some of the heat" has come out of the market following €15 billion worth of frenzied buying in commercial property here in 2015.

‘Re-invest’

“We’ve taken a look at where we want to do business and our three markets are the London city region, Manchester and Dublin,” he said. “As we roll off capital from our projects last year we’re looking to re-invest them into projects going forward.”

Will there be acquisitions here this year? “I would very much hope so,” he said. “That frenetic activity [of 2015] we would expect to come off a little bit. Maybe it’s Brexit influence or general election influence but we’re seeing more signs of value [in Ireland] whereas towards the end of last year we didn’t see much value in the market.”

Mr Weiner said its focus in the Dublin market would continue to be on mixed-use schemes, involving offices and residential in the main.

He declined to comment on whether Brexit would be good or bad for his company.