Colliers advises on €33M COVID19-proof hypermarket sale & leaseback

With the resilience of grocery anchored real estate shining throughout the Coronavirus crisis, Colliers has advised hypermarket chain Family Cash in a 30-year sale & leaseback transaction. The 7 traded properties are located on the Spanish Mediterranean coast in the towns of Xàtiva, Ontinyent, Gandia, Museros (Valencia), Vinaroz (Castellón), Alcoi (Alicante) and Molina de Segura (Murcia) and have a combined gross leasable area of 54,300 m² and almost 3,150 parking spaces.

Spain declared the state of alarm on the 14^th of March 2020 implying a lock down for the vast majority of Spain’s stores. However, supermarkets and hypermarkets are all open to the public, including those operated by Family Cash. The hypermarket chain was founded six years ago by José Canet and plans to grow from 14 to 30 stores in the next two years aided by the liquidity generated by the ‘sale and lease back’ transaction. The founder is a former director of Vidal Tiendas who owned several stores that he ended up integrating into Masymas, another supermarket group.

The buyer is a pan-European net lease investment fund and the transaction has been structured under a ‘sale and leaseback’ scheme in which Family Cash remains a lessee for a period of 30 years.

The Managing Director of Family Cash, José Canet, pointed out that «with this important injection of resources the group will consolidate the opening of eight stores in 2020, which will enable the creation of 680 jobs generating an estimated turnover of around €300 million euros and eight other stores in 2021, which will employ another 700 workers.»

The next store openings are expected to be in Osuna and in Puerto de Sagunto. Meanwhile, stores in Pobla de Vallbona, Amposta and Tomelloso are scheduled for the first quarter of 2021. Most of the operations have been acquired from Eroski and others are turnkey projects where the standard format has about 4,000m² of sales room, on plots of over 12,000 m² of surface area.

According to Rafael Paz, director of Colliers’ Valencian office, the property consultants «are especially satisfied with the closing of this transaction, taking into account the complexity of the current circumstances, those of the transaction itself and the number of assets involved. It is a process that we initiated and completed in just three months».