2 months ago
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Real estate investment trust Kingston Properties Limited, KPREIT, says its acquisitions in the United Kingdom have been performing slightly better than its holdings in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands and are contributing to the overall positive performance of the company.
Kingston Properties CEO Kevin Richards said the company has been outperforming other similar companies both in Jamaica and overseas when measured by a range of metrics.
“We always track our performance against a composite of international REITs as well as against other local real estate companies. From a total return standpoint, we are outpacing both the international REITs as well as the local real estate companies,” Richards told the Financial Gleaner.
Total returns include the stock price movement as well as the dividend yield, Richards explained. He said when considering about 10 different performance metrics, KPREIT was ahead in eight of them.
The company registered group-rental income of US$1.38 million for the first quarter of 2025, which is an increase of 24 per cent over the corresponding period in 2024, the unaudited financial statements showed. Net operating income increased by 11 per cent to US$0.8 million during the period while group profit grew by six per cent to US$1 million.
KPREIT currently owns properties in Jamaica, the UK, The Cayman Islands, and the United States. In the UK, it owns an office building in Bristol and another in Dorking, a wealthy market town in Surrey. It is considering further investments in that market, Richards said.
“The yields we are seeing on the assets that we’re targeting in the UK are comparable to the yields we’re getting in Jamaica and higher than the yields we’re getting in The Cayman Islands,” he said, noting that the net income yield in the UK was close to 11 per cent.
In Jamaica, KPREIT is considering developing the parking lot on East Street in downtown Kingston, which adjoins two buildings, amounting to 60,000 square feet on Duke Street it acquired last year.
Meanwhile, construction of a 14 mini-warehouse complex spanning 26,000 square feet is under way at Rousseau Road in Kingston. The project is 20 per cent complete and is due to be finalised by the first quarter of 2026.
The company’s push into the UK market comes amid focus on geographic diversification, partly because the Caribbean region has a high probability of extreme weather events.
“Geographic flexibility will remain a core focus of our strategy, and we will actively explore commercial property opportunities in locations that satisfy our core strategic imperatives of stable democracies, strong property law rules, freely convertible currencies and competitive yields,” the company said in its first quarter report.
English (US) ·