Mapletree Acquires $1.1B Portfolio from Prologis, Norges

By Gail Kalinoski

Kent Northwest Corp. Park 7 (above) and Metz, France DC 3

Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based real estate investment, development and property management company, is expanding its holdings in the U.S. and Europe with the acquisition of a $1.1 billion portfolio of logistics assets. Most of the properties were co-owned in a joint venture between Prologis Inc. and Norges Bank Real Estate Management.

The 16.5 million-square-foot logistics portfolio has assets in established distribution centers in the U.S., such as Chicago, Dallas and Seattle, as well as in France, Germany, Hungary and Poland. Mapletree noted these properties have excellent access to key transportation nodes including major highways, ports and airports.

“This acquisition is in line with Mapletree’s strategy to increase our global footprint as a logistics real estate provider and to venture beyond Asia—a strategy we have been executing since 2014. With properties strategically situated in key distribution hubs, Mapletree is well positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for modern logistics facilities and the thriving e-commerce sector globally,” Michael Smith, regional CEO, Europe and Asia, for Mapletree, said in a prepared statement.

Prologis said the deal included 144 acres of land, as well as 46 buildings totaling 9.9 million square feet principally in Poland, France and Hungary, and 40 buildings totaling 6.6 million square feet primarily in Seattle, Dallas and Chicago.

NBREM said 37 of those properties, totaling 8.4 million square feet, were part of its joint venture with Prologis and included assets in Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, New Jersey, South Florida, France, Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands. It received $182.6 million for its 45 percent ownership in the U.S. portfolio assets and 90.2 million euro (nearly $104 million) for its 50 percent ownership in the European properties. The properties were acquired as part of larger portfolio transactions spanning from March 2013 to May 2015.

Prologis has been longtime partners with both NBREM and its parent, Norway-based Norges Bank Investment Management, investing in billions of dollars of transactions in recent years. In January, Prologis and NBREM, acquired one industrial property—a 357,000-square-foot facility at 570 Eccles Ave. in South San Francisco from Sanrio Inc., for $64.6 million. Prologis, as the majority partner with 55 percent ownership, paid $35.5 million. At the same time, Prologis and NBREM announced they had sold 27 logistics facilities totaling 3.1 million square feet in metropolitan Chicago, Florida and New Jersey in two phases to a Blackstone affiliate, BRE Alpha Industrial Property Owner LLC. Prologis received $134.8 million of the $244.9 million sales price on those transactions.

Prologis realigns portfolio

Michael Curless, Prologis chief investment officer, said the sale of the U.S. and European portfolio to Mapletree completes the company’s efforts to realign its portfolio as part of its long-term investment strategy.

“Our portfolio realignment program began in 2011 and, upon completion in the fourth quarter of this year, will total approximately $14 billion of building sales on an owned and managed basis,” Curless said in a prepared statement.

The closing of this major portfolio disposition comes just months after Prologis announced and then concluded its acquisition of DCT Industrial Trust Inc. for $8.4 billion. In a stock-for-stock transaction, Prologis acquired 71 million square feet of assets in high-growth markets including Southern California, the San Francisco Bay area, New York, New Jersey, Seattle and South Florida. It also included 1 million square feet of development, redevelopment and value-added projects; 195 acres of land in predevelopment with build-out potential of more than 2.9 million square feet; and 215 acres of land under contract or option with a build-out potential of more than 3.3 million square feet.

For Mapletree, the acquisition of such a large logistics portfolio marks the group’s deeper penetration into U.S. and European markets, where acquisitions previously focused on student housing, serviced apartments (including the acquisition of a partner, Oakwood Worldwide) and data centers.

In December 2017, a joint venture of Mapletree Investments and Mapletree Industrial Trust formed an unlisted, single-purpose trust Mapletree Redwood Data Centre Trust to invest in a 14-asset data center portfolio from Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT for about $750 million. Mapletree investments hold a 60 percent interest in MRDCT, with Mapletree Trust holding the remaining 40 percent. The data centers total approximately 2.3 million square feet and are located in nine states—California, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas.

Images courtesy of Mapletree Investments