Interessant puntje tijdens de AvA (3):
How do you explain the underperformance of the share price (vs. the CAC40 and Klepierre in particular)?
Can you talk about the main questions (fears but also hopes) of the financial community (brokers, investors,
rating agencies) on your company?
It is not up to us to interpret the financial markets, but in general, the significant volatility in markets is not
directly related to and doesn’t reflect the strength of our business, nor our assets.
Part of the relative underperformance might be driven by the temporary short-selling ban which was
implemented by several European countries including France, Spain and Italy following the COVID-19 outbreak.
Investors are not able to increase their short position as long as the ban is in place for companies that are listed
in those markets. URW is however also listed in The Netherlands, which didn’t implement such a ban. As such,
investors that want to short the retail sector are likely over represented in URW.
Certainly the business is challenging considering the fundamental retail changes going on in our society today, in
combination with the current COVID-19 lockdowns and aftermath.
We believe that although recovery may take a while, people are resilient, and will go back to visit our mixed-use
destinations where people can shop, work, come together to share memorable experiences, and have a seamless
customer experience.
URW has been anticipating the change in the retail environment and we have been actively been positioning
ourselves for this by selling smaller retail assets which in todays’ market are fundamentally weaker than our
flagships. This is also reflected in the better operating performance of URW assets, with tenant sales
outperforming the market indices consistently.