David Sleath, Chief Executive at Segro explained in a release that «the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technology and e-commerce across society. Alongside a renewed focus by many occupiers on the critical importance of best-in-class logistics supply chains, this is likely to help drive strong occupier and investor demand for modern, high-quality warehouses».
The latest data on e-commerce shows the importance of reinforcing this bet. In the United Kingdom, for example, the e-commerce volumes in April represented 31% of retail sales, 16 % higher than the previous month, according to ONS. Similar trends have been observed across Continental Europe, mentioned the document.
Spain remains one of the British REIT’s big bets, which revealed in May its goal of investing a further 600 million euro in the country, totalling 1 billion euro in assets within 3 years.
On the current moment, David Sleath assumed that «Segro’s business continues to progress well, despite the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, with new lettings and pre-let development agreements at levels above our expectations at the beginning of the year. We are working constructively to support a small proportion of customers facing short-term cash flow challenges as a result of government lockdown measures».
«Our strong, primarily pre-let, development pipeline across the UK and Continental Europe reflects the demand from customers looking to grow. Our list of additional near-term pre-lets, which is approximately double the size of a year ago, and our well-located land bank mean we are well-placed to make further progress in the months ahead», added David Sleath.
