Real estate investor LondonMetric Property (LMP) continues to have a good crisis as it said it would increase its quarterly dividend off the back of strong rent collection in the period. The shares were up 2.1% to 216.2p.
The company, which is focused on logistics properties, said it will increase its first quarterly dividend for the financial year ending 31 March 2021. The dividend will be declared in August and paid in October
The firm said 95% of advance rental payments due up to 24 June, had been collected, while a further 3% was expected to be received imminently and the remaining 2% was in discussions, less than half of which was expected to be forgiven.
The proportion of rental income that is received monthly in advance instead of quarterly was unchanged at 18%.
LondonMetric also announced that it had now completed on £54.5 million of disposals comprising two distribution warehouse in Doncaster, let to Next (NXT) and DFS (DFS), as well as an Audi car dealership in Cheltenham which was acquired through the Mucklow portfolio.
In April LondonMetric raised £120 million to fund acquisitions as management saw particular opportunities to make acquisitions at a time when competition for quality assets was lower.
It has already deployed £83 million of this new money, adding Ocado (OCDO) to its customer base.
