Charter Hall’s profit down in 1H23

Oksana Patron

21 February 2023

Charter Hall Group has posted a 56.3% drop in its profit after tax attributable to stapled securityholders of the group to $226.5 million at the end of December, 2022.

At the same time, gross revenue which did not include share of net profits of associates and joint ventures (of $61.3 million) was down 16.4% year-on-year to $473.1 million.

The group’s funds under management (FUM) grew by $8.1 billion to $88 billion and included $73 billion of property FUM and $15 billion of Paradice Investment Management (PIM) FUM.

Property FUM grew by $7.3 billion and were driven by $4.3 billion of net acquisitions, positive revaluations of $0.3 billion and capex spend predominantly on developments of $2.7 billion, the firm said.

The gross equity inflows included inflows of $547 million in Wholesale Pooled Funds, $1.2 billion in Wholesale Partnerships, $5 million in Listed Funds and $296 million in Direct managed funds.

During the period, the property investment portfolio value increased by $126 million to $3 billion and generated a 10.4% total property investment return.

Charter Hall’s managing director and group’s chief executive, David Harrison, said the focus remained on “curating sustainable and resilient portfolios”.

“We’ve also delivered over $2 billion of development completions in the last 12 months, providing our investors access to unique investment opportunities in new, purpose-built assets,” he said.

“We remain well placed to continue growing the platform with $6.5 billion in available liquidity, significant opportunities in our sale and leaseback pipeline, our $15.4 billion development pipeline as well as a number of new product initiatives.”

In the announcement made to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), the group reaffirmed FY23 earnings guidance was for post-tax operating earnings per security of no less than 90.0 cps given no material adverse change in current market conditions.

FY23 distribution per security guidance was for 6% growth over FY22.