It is the second acquired in this country in just two months
Amancio Ortega continues to expand his real estate empire. The founder and largest shareholder of Inditex has bought, through Pontegadea, its investment arm, a distribution center in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), for 148 million dollars (about 147 million euros) , according to the American press and has signature confirmed. This is the second logistics asset that Ortega acquires in the North American country after last August it took over a platform occupied by the FedEx company in Menomonee Falls in Wisconsin (United States) for an amount of 35 million dollars (about €34 million) .
This second logistics asset, acquired from a subsidiary of Realty Income and rented from the American department store firm TJX, has an area of ​​more than 90,000 square meters.
Pontegadea Inmobiliaria is the vehicle through which Amancio Ortega invests a large part of the dividends he receives from his majority stake in Inditex. The firm, which is the largest Spanish real estate company , has a portfolio of real estate assets made up mainly of non-residential office buildings located in the center of large cities in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Asia. However, recently it also landed in the residential sector with the acquisition of a skyscraper in Manhattan (New York) for 500 million euros.
Portfolio diversification
Along with investments in real estate, the firm has been making purchases in other sectors for years to diversify its portfolio. As a result of this roadmap, at the end of July it announced the purchase of a 49% stake in Repsol’s “Kappa” photovoltaic complex , located in Manzanares (Ciudad Real), for an amount of 27 million euros; and the acquisition of 5% of Enagás Renovable. In November, it invested another 245 million euros to take a 49% stake in Repsol’s Delta wind farm (Zaragoza), in what was its first operation in the renewable sector. It was not, however, his first commitment to the energy sector. Its first investments in this field date back to December 2019. It was then that it acquired the5% of Enagás for 281.64 million euros. Ortega is the largest shareholder of the firm together with the State, which controls another 5% of the company in charge of managing gas infrastructures in Spain through the State Industrial Participation Company (SEPI). In the summer of 2021, the founder of Inditex continued to expand his portfolio in the energy sector with the purchase of another 5% of Red Eléctrica Española (REE) and 12% of Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN), both in charge of managing the transmission and distribution of electricity in Spain and Portugal. While its stake in REE is valued at around 456 million euros, that of REN amounts to approximately 188 million. In the case of the Spanish company, its 5% makes Pontegadea the second largest shareholder only behind SEPI, which has another 20% stake.
Last year, Pontegadea almost tripled its profit, reaching 1,606 million euros , although these profits are still 10% below the levels of 2019, just before the pandemic. What has already recovered the values ​​prior to the coronavirus is its real estate assets, whose value rose by 8% to reach 15,264 million. The portfolio thus exceeds both the figures for 2020 -14,075 million- and those for 2019 -15,163 million-.
Inditex’s dividends are the company’s main financial fuel. In the last year, Pontegadea increased its turnover by nearly 54%, reaching 1,970 million , of which 1,323 million corresponded to income derived from the payment of dividends from its investee companies, mainly Inditex -1,294 million, compared to 646 million from the previous year- , while the remaining 647 million came from its real estate business.
The benefit of the investment arm of Amancio Ortega includes the results obtained from the sale of 4,080 telecommunications towers from Telxius, a subsidiary of Telefónica, to American Tower International (ATC), in an operation that closed in January 2021 for 600 million.
