New foreign investment in the Barcelona metropolitan area. The French real estate company Frey, listed on the Euronext market in Paris, has just acquired 100% of the Finestrelles shopping center, located in Esplugues de Llobregat, for 127.5 million euros. The seller was the Belgian development group Equilis, which debuted in Spain with this commercial project, inaugurated in November 2018. Frey already invested in Catalonia four years ago with the purchase of the Parc Vallès shopping center in Terrassa and also has a project in Lleida, where it plans to invest 100 million together with Eurofund.
The new owner highlights Finestrelles' strategic position, at the foot of the Ronda de Dalt and with an area of influence of 470,000 inhabitants "with a purchasing power higher than the average for Catalonia and Spain as a whole." It also emphasizes the shopping center's proximity to the offices of large companies such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and to university campuses that total 37,000 students. Frey expects to obtain 8.14 million euros in income this year from the operation of Finestrelles, a figure that includes parking spaces and rental of premises, which currently have an occupancy rate of 96.5%.
This open-air urban shopping center, the last to be built in the Barcelona area, receives an average of seven million visitors a year and has a total built area of 99,630 m² and a gross leasable area (GLA) of 39,250 m² distributed among more than 100 stores. H&M, Zara, Mango, Kiabi, Bershka, Decathlon, Alcampo, MediaMarkt and AliExpress are some of the main operators of the complex, along with an Alcampo hypermarket and a VivaGym gym. There is also a gastronomic area of more than 2,000 m² that houses seven restaurants. In total, Finestrelles, managed by Cushman & Wakefield, employs about 1,300 people.
"This new acquisition reinforces our presence in Iberia. Frey continues its expansion strategy, with the ambition of becoming the European leader in sustainable retail. The Finestrelles Shopping Center is a high-quality asset. It contains all the fundamentals that we appreciate at Frey and will allow the group to deploy all its expertise in management and animation. We are very happy to integrate it into our property portfolio," said Antoine Frey, chairman and CEO of the acquiring group.
"This transaction represents a significant turning point in our market and in the retail sector, being a purchase by institutional capital in one of the main Spanish cities. It also demonstrates the growing interest of investors in shopping centers as the return to 2019 levels in terms of footfall and sales is confirmed. Although there is some concern about the macroeconomic situation in Europe, the need to invest in good assets based on secure long-term income remains even more relevant today," explained two of the transaction's advisors, Steven Weaving, from RPE, and Rupert Lea, from Cushman & Wakefield. The buyer was advised by Perez Llorca, Arcadis, and Grant Thornton.
Frey is a young company, founded in 2007, to develop a new concept of sustainable and open-air shopping center. The French company, certified as B-Corp, operates in France, Spain, and Portugal, where it manages various assets valued at 1.4 billion euros, totaling over half a million square meters.