French listed property firm Icade has entered the Portuguese property market with the acquisition of a portfolio of four private hospital assets for €213 mln, the largest such deal in the country.
The transaction, which was carried out by Icade’s healthcare property investment division, was structured as a share deal with Icade taking over 100% of the Portuguese Real Estate Investment Fund owning the assets from its previous owner, insurance group Fidelidade.
The fund was put up for sale through agent CBRE after the summer. ‘It was a very competitive sales process with all the major healthcare property investors participating,’ says Igor Borrego, capital advisors director at CBRE Portugal, which brokered the deal alongside the Netherlands, UK and Spanish Capital Advisors teams. ‘Given the scale of the portfolio, the sale represented a unique opportunity to gain exposure to this asset class in Portugal,’ he tells PropertyEU.
The sales price compares to a net book value of the fund of €151 mln. It is believed to set a new record yield of 4.7% for healthcare property assets in the country.
The properties, which were non-strategic to Fidelidade’s business, are located in Lisbon, Porto, Albufeira and Lagos in Portugal’s Algarve region. Situated in the city centre, the four recently built, state-of-the-art facilities have a total floor area of 90,000 m2 with over 500 beds. The assets in Porto and Lisbon are among the best healthcare facilities in Portugal.
The existing leases on all these assets will remain in place for a term of over eight years on average, meaning the properties will start generating cash flows immediately. The facilities in Lisbon, Porto and Albufeira are operated by Lusíadas, Portugal’s third largest healthcare provider, with the one in Lagos managed by regional operator HPA Saúde.
The acquisition comes hard on the heels of Icade’s €85 mln purchase last week of a portfolio of private hospitals in Italy. It brings Icade’s healthcare investment in 2021 to nearly €880 mln, well above the firm’s target for the year of €500 mln.
Icade’s healthcare division plans to invest €3 bn by 2025, with nearly 30% of this amount invested to date. Icade’s Healthcare Property Investment Division now owns assets in five countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal), with those located outside France making up 18% of a €6.9 bn portfolio.
