Capital Shopping Earnings Rise as Trafford Centre Purchase Lifts Revenue

Capital Shopping Centres Group Plc (CSCG), the U.K.’s largest publicly traded shopping-mall owner, said full-year profit excluding items rose 43 percent after acquisitions boosted revenue.

Profit excluding changes in asset values and one-time items rose to 138.6 million pounds ($218 million), or 16.5 pence a share, the London-based company said in a statement today. That compares with a profit of 96.6 million pounds, or 15.4 pence, a year earlier. Net asset value was unchanged from six months earlier at 391 pence a share.

Analysts expected Capital Shopping to generate earnings of 16.2 pence a share, the average of 19 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company’s 1.6 billion-pound purchase of the Trafford Centre in Manchester, England, in January 2011 was the biggest single property transaction in Europe last year, according to New York-based Real Capital Analytics Inc.

With the Trafford Centre, Capital Shopping owns 10 of the U.K.’s 25 largest malls by retail sales, including the Metrocentre at Gateshead. The company also acquired a 75 percent stake in the Broadmarsh shopping center in Nottingham for 55 million pounds in November.

Capital Shopping fell 5.1 pence to 334.8 pence in London trading yesterday. The shares advanced 16 percent in the three months to yesterday’s close, the second-best performance of the 11 members of the FTSE 350 Real Estate Investment Trust Index, which rose 8.2 percent in the same period.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Packard in London at packard@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net.