ASX-listed Charter Hall Social Infrastructure REIT has bought two childcare portfolios across Western Australia and Victoria totalling $134.3 million, reflecting a passing yield of 4.6%.
The deals include a portfolio of 18 operating childcare centres located across WA and a portfolio of three newly built centres in Melbourne.
The acquisitions bolster the REIT’s footprint in both states and grow its portfolio to $1.9 billion, making it the largest listed social infrastructure fund in the country.
The WA Bowman Group Childcare portfolio features 13 centres located within metropolitan Perth and the remaining five located regionally.
The WA properties are fully leased to Australia’s two largest childcare operators, Goodstart Early Learning and G8 Education with a weighted average lease expiry (WALE) of 12.5 years
The three Melbourne properties are fully leased to Nino Early Learning for an initial 20 years on a triple net lease.
“We are pleased to add these quality childcare properties with strong fundamentals to the portfolio and build on our tenant customer relationship with these three operators,” said CQE Fund Manager Travis Butcher.
“Further, these acquisitions have enabled us to upgrade our FY22 forecast distribution guidance by 9.6% from FY21 to 17.2 cents per unit (cpu), which is a great result for our investor customers.”
Charter Hall Chief Investment Officer Sean McMahon said the portfolio acquisitions were negotiated primarily off-market and via a selective expression-of-interest process.
“Charter Hall’s cross-sector approach enables us to leverage our relationships with cross-sector vendors, such as the Agosta Family, and purchasers to consistently deliver excellent outcomes for our investor customers,” said McMahon.
The Western Australia portfolio transaction was brokered by Ian Bowman, founder of Centreplace Capital and Daniel Steffe of Genera 45.
The Melbourne portfolio transaction was brokered by CBRE’s Sandro Peluso, Jimmy Tat and Marcello Caspani-Muto.
Charter Hall became the manager of CQE in 2018.
