Fresh from announcing the sales of its stake in the owner of Bicester Village to LVMH-back L Catterton for £1.5 billion (albeit at a £500 million loss), Hammerson was in a upbeat mood Thursday, delivering its year-end financial report.

It showed “strong financial and operational progress”, despite a half-year loss of £517 million.
 
The UK property giant, which has concluded three years of an “intense turnaround” programme overhauling its business into a core portfolio of city centre mixed-use destinations in the UK, Ireland and France, said it “now is realising the benefits of our investments in recent years”.

CEO Rita-Rose Gagné said: “Our leading city centre destinations are in high demand, supported by our ongoing investment and repositioning. This is evidenced by another year-on-year increase in leasing, up 24%. This is driving top line growth with more to come.”  
 
This also included positive footfall growth across its estate, boosted special attractions to draw in extra visitors.
 
Flagship footfall and like-for-like sales in the UK were up 1% and down -3% respectively, “predominantly reflecting the amount of activity we’ve undertaken in repositioning assets in recent years where either we’ve proactively taken vacant possession of space and/or new occupiers are not yet in the like-for-like sample”.  
 
That positive footfall was helped by its activation programme ‘summer of sport’, which helped to drive visitors to its city-centre destinations as part of nine nationwide Official Team GB and Paralympics GB Fanzones. This included the Bullring in Birmingham, Cabot Circus in Bristol, and Westquay in Southampton.
 
It also said flagship occupancy remained strong at 94%. In the UK, Brent Cross, Bullring and Westquay are all over 95% occupied, as are its three destinations in Ireland.  
 
It signed 140 leases representing £23 million of headline rent, up 24% year-on-year, while noting just over half of leasing was “to best-in-class fashion occupiers demanded by our customers”, and the balance to non-fashion and services (34%) and F&B and leisure (11%).
 
And although the company still reported that loss of £517 million during the first half, it said it was down to an “impairment of investment in [Bicester Village owner] Value Retail from a carrying value of £1.1 billion”.
 
Hence, Hammerson downplayed the significance of the loss, insisting that its performance over the past six months had been “strong” and that the sale of Value Retail would allow it to accelerate growth.
 
Gagné concluded: “I am pleased to report we’ve had a strong first half”, also noting the company had “delivered another outperformance on costs”, down 16%.