British Land, the UK’s second largest property company, has reported a slight dip in underlying profit but boasted of strong office leasing activity.
The FTSE 100 company said it generated £198m of underlying profit — a measure of pre-tax earnings that strips out fluctuations in property values — in the half year to September, compared with £199m for the same period in 2016.
Statutory pre-tax profit — a metric which includes property values — stood at £238m for the period, up from a £205m loss for the same period last year.
The value of British Land’s property portfolio fell from £13.9bn to £13.5bn over the half year. It leased 1.3m square feet of office space, up from the 769,000 from the same period in 2016.
British Land announced in July that it would buy back £300m of its own shares after concluding this offers better value than spending its cash pile on land and properties. On Thursday, it said it had bought back £156m to and was on track to complete the buyback by the end of the financial year.
The UK’s second-largest listed property company sold its 50 per cent stake in London’s “Cheesegrater” skyscraper earlier this year for £575m as part of the sale of the whole building to Chinese buyers.