The Charter Hall Group (ASX: CHC) share price is soaring today, up 6.09% to $18.30 per share.
This comes after the ASX 200 real estate share released its results for the financial year ending 30 June (FY21).
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Charter Hall share price lifts on increased FUM
The company's earnings highlights include:
- Operating earnings of $284.3 million
- Operating earnings per security (OEPS) post-tax of 61.0 cents per share (cps)
- Statutory profit of $476.8 million, after tax attributable to shareholders
- 5% return on contributed equity
- Declared full year dividend of 37.9 cps
What happened during the reporting period for Charter Hall?
In FY21, Charter Hall's Property Investment portfolio increased by 18.8% to reach $2.4 billion. The portfolio generated a 15.0% total property investment return.
The portfolio remains well-diversified, with no single asset making up more than 5% of the total. Occupancy was 97.4% with a weighted average lease expiry (WALE) of 9.1 years, up from 8.7 years in FY20.
The company reported $1.1 billion of development completions during the financial year, with a re-stocked development pipeline growing to $8.8 billion.
Charter Hall's share price could also be getting a lift after reporting its managed funds increased by 29% over the 12 months, to $52.3 billion. The company credits most of that to $5.9 billion of net acquisitions and positive revaluations of $4.1 billion.
On the funding side, the group has $6.7 billion of available investment capacity and more than $500 million on its balance sheet.
What did management say?
Commenting on the results, Charter Hall CEO David Harrison said:
[W]e have generated record fund inflows, gross transactions and FUM growth of $11.7 billion in FY21, whilst generating sector-leading returns for our investor customers and shareholders… Our success as a business is built upon partnering with our tenant and investor customers to drive mutually beneficial outcomes with a razor-sharp focus on being customer centric.
This partnership approach generated $5.3 billion of gross equity inflows, with all equity sources recording strong inflows. FUM grew 29% as our strategy of securing long-leases with best-in-class tenants continued to drive returns for investors. We transacted on a record $10.1 billion of assets, successfully deploying our investment strategies both on and off-market…
Sale and leaseback transactions represented over 40% of our transaction activity as we continue to partner with tenants and investors to unlock investment opportunities. Our develop-to-core strategy also saw us deliver over $1 billion in development completions.
What's next for Charter Hall?
Looking ahead, the company offered earnings guidance (provided there are no significant unfavourable changes to current market conditions) indicating a 6% increase in dividend distribution for FY22.
Harrison commented:
As we begin FY22, we are well positioned with $6.7 billion of investment capacity to deploy into our $8.8 billion development pipeline, which will be further advanced with continuing equity inflows.
The Charter Hall share price is up 49% over the past 12 months.
