The Guardian Real Estate (GARE11) real estate fund has just acquired 15 stores from Atacadão — in a transaction that strengthens the fund’s urban income strategy and helps in the deleveraging of Carrefour Brasil, the controlling company of the wholesale network.

The transaction was for R$ 725 million and was structured as a ‘sale and leaseback’, with Atacadão becoming the tenant of the properties. The contract is atypical with a term of 13 years, renewable for another five.

The cap rate was 8%, with Atacadão committing to pay R$ 4.8 million in rent per month, or R$ 58 million per year.

To sell the stores, Carrefour Brasil organized a competitive process with the participation of major players in the real estate sector.

In the final round, Guardian, TRX (another real estate fund manager), and Pátria (which recently bought Credit Suisse’s real estate operation) were in the running. Other players who looked at the asset included the real estate managers from BTG and XP.

In addition to the price, Carrefour’s decision to choose Guardian was influenced by the fact that the manager already had the full transaction amount in cash — eliminating any risk of raising funds at a time when it is difficult for REITs to raise new resources with the Selic interest rate at almost 11%.

GARE11 has approximately R$ 700 million in cash, after raising R$ 630 million in December in an offering and another R$ 280 million from the sale of a logistics warehouse in Salvador, leased to BRF.

Last week, the fund also received a purchase offer of R$ 273 million for another warehouse leased to BRF in Pernambuco.

GARE11 was launched in 2022 focusing on the logistics sector. Earlier this year, it expanded its mandate to operate in the urban income segment as well. After the December offering, the fund made two acquisitions in this segment, buying stores from Grupo Pão de Açúcar and Grupo Mateus.

Before today’s transaction, the fund had 25 assets; half of the revenue came from logistics warehouses, and the other half from retail properties.

Now, urban income assets will account for about 70% of the portfolio.

Gustavo Asdourian, the manager of GARE11, told Brazil Journal that the fund’s goal is to maintain a balance of 50/50 between these two strategies, which will be adjusted with future acquisitions in the logistics sector. “We have a pipeline of nearly R$ 1 billion in logistics, so we can easily seek this rebalancing,” he said.

The fund’s strategy is to buy low-risk assets, leased to triple-A companies, with long and atypical contracts in which the tenant must pay a 100% penalty in case of contract breach.

Gustavo mentioned that today’s transaction was at R$ 3,500 per square meter, below similar operations in the sector that have been around R$ 4,000.

About 40% of the Atacadão stores being sold are located in São Paulo. Another portion (41%) is in the Midwest, 6% in the Northeast, 6% in the North, and 6% in the South.

In total, the stores have 264,000 square meters of Gross Leasable Area (GLA).

For Carrefour Brasil, this will be its second ‘sale and leaseback’ operation in just over a year. In September 2023, the company did a similar operation — selling five distribution centers and five stores — to Barzel Properties. That transaction was closed for R$ 1.2 billion, with a cap rate of 9.1%.

Both transactions were made to increase operational efficiency and reduce leverage. In the first quarter of this year, Carrefour Brasil’s leverage closed at around 3x EBITDA.

The Guardian was advised by XP.

Carrefour did not have a financial advisor.


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