JSE-listed Hyprop on Friday said progress was being made in the potential dual-listing of its 60%-owned UK-based Hystead subsidiary, which holds all of Hyprop’s South-Eastern Europe assets, by the first half of 2018.

Hystead is eyeing additional listings on the Johannesburg and Luxembourg bourses to enable it to become a standalone fund, reduce its reliance on Hyprop and position it for growth, said Hyprop CEO Pieter Prinsloo.

This comes as the fund works to wrap up its €155-million acquisition of The Mall shopping centre, in Sofia, Bulgaria, with Hyprop’s support settling at around €105-million.

The Mall is the dominant shopping centre in Sofia and has a rentable area of 52 000 m² – with the opportunity to expand by a further 12 000 m² – at a weighted average rent of €18.30/m² a month.

Hystead now owns four properties in the region, including Delta City Belgrade, in Serbia; Delta City Podgorica, in Montenegro; and Skopje City Mall, in Macedonia, which was acquired in October 2016 for €92-million.

The Mall acquisition, which still required Bulgarian competition authority approval and which is expected to be completed by October, would mark Hystead’s first entry into the European Union, Prinsloo told media during a roundtable discussing the company’s year-end results.

It will also take the overall South-Eastern European portfolio to a gross asset value of about €460-million, while enhancing the quality, profile and critical mass of the portfolio.

During the year ended June 30, the South-Eastern Europe portfolio contributed R101.8-million to Hyprop’s distributable earnings, benefiting from positive trading conditions and healthy consumer spend.

“Our expansion into the emerging market of South-Eastern Europe has proven successful. In the first year of inclusion, net income from the quality portfolio exceeded budget, we maintained zero vacancies and both trading density and footcount grew on average by 6%,” Prinsloo concluded.