The SOCIMI (listed real estate investment company) P3 wants to enter the Olympus of logistics owners in Spain. The company, which is 100% owned by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund (GIC), will end 2023 with a portfolio of 833,000 square meters of industrial platforms and warehouses. As it also has ongoing projects for 190,000 square meters, and already has land owned or approved with an exclusivity option for half a million square meters, the company expects to greatly exceed one million square meters in the medium term. But the first milestone of that journey will arrive in 2024, according to the firm’s plans. P3 hopes to exceed one million square meters “by the end of next year,” indicated its general director in Spain, Javier Mérida, in a presentation to the media held this Tuesday in Madrid.
Although the logistics SOCIMI is already one of the most important in this sector in Spain, the expansion of its portfolio will allow it to enter the select group of companies that are already millionaires on surface. This requirement is met by Merlin – the largest SOCIMI in the Spanish stock market and owner of a wide variety of assets (such as offices or commercial spaces) – and three other specialized companies: Logicor, Prologis and Montepino. P3, therefore, would be the fifth real estate company (some commercial giants also have vast facilities) to exceed one million logistic square meters.
The expansion of surface area will also entail an expansion of the modest staff of the SOCIMI, 100% owned by the Singapore investment fund. Of the 270 employees it has throughout Europe, 17 work in the Spanish division. Until 2025 (inclusive) it hopes to incorporate five more people, according to the plans that Mérida has presented. “One of the strategic changes of the last year is to dedicate more resources to asset management, which allows us to have better control of the properties, investments and provide better service to our clients,” said the general director. What is not planned is to go outside its current geographical areas of activity (Catalonia, Madrid-Guadalajara-Toledo, Valencia, Malaga and the Basque Country), although it will expand its footprint within them.
The executive has described a relatively quiet year for the company in Spain. Through direct acquisition, P3 has only incorporated two warehouses in Picassent (Valencia) in 2023 that total just under 24,000 square meters. Mérida has justified this by the lack of agreement between potential buyers and sellers on transaction prices at a time of falling real estate valuations throughout Europe. “We consider that in Spain there is still a long way to go for adjustment, in other European countries they have been faster, and we expect an adjustment for next year,” he said. That is to say, they expect more opportunities that will lead the GIC to take out the checkbook in 2024 and in the meantime they continue to develop projects on their own land, which already represent 40% of their assets.
Based in Prague, as the origin of the entire continental portfolio is in the Czech Republic, P3 is one of the largest real estate logistics companies in Europe. It is present in 11 countries (after entering the United Kingdom this year) and totals 8.3 million square meters. The company estimates that the more than 300 assets they have add up to a market value of around 8.3 billion euros. Germany, with more than three million square meters, is its largest market, followed by the Czech Republic. The third and fourth position by volume of properties is disputed between Poland and Spain, something that the company’s plans for the latter country could help to resolve in the coming years.
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