I received a phone call response yesterday to my email from James Storey (the CEO) and to his credit he graciously gave me 30 minutes of his time.
I got clarification on a few things which was quite helpful in understanding the current thinking of management but want to be clear that this is how I interpreted/recall his answers (I wasn't taking notes or anything like that and want to make sure that I'm not misrepresenting anything that we discussed).
1. Home HQ Artamon: This is a minority stake in an unlisted trust that is managed by Fortius and has Blackrock as the majority owner. 360 are quite limited in their influence here because of having a relatively small stake but have tried to move the process along as best as they can. The property recently had an expression of interest campaign which closed on the 1st of June however I unfortunately got the sense that interest was quite limited and a sale might not be as imminent as I expected. I did some searching around and found the article below which covers the launch of the recent sales campaign.
https://www.shoppingcentrenews.com.au/latest-news/industry-news/fortius-to-sell-artarmon-home-hq/2. Wording in the recent presentation about expansion, diversification and use of private capital: James basically said that patience would be required here and pointed to the long history of deal making that 360 has although he did concede that the current financial capacity of TOT is quite limited. 360 apparently also has the first option to purchase the remaining 50 percent of the Cremorne building which is interesting.
3. Buyback: This has been activated so that it remains an option for 12 months but I got the sense that it will not be possible without the Home HQ stake being sold so again is unlikely to be imminent
4. Timing of the office purchases: James seemed very confident that the offices in TOT are amongst the best currently available amongst the ASX REITS which was interesting. He also seemed very confident that will all be fully leased soon and will remain so for the foreseeable future due to the quality of the locations and the buildings themselves. In terms of the timing he pointed out that TOT would also have experienced an NTA fall if they'd stayed holding strategic stakes in other REITS and also mentioned that nobody expected interest rates to rise as fast as they have.
I respectfully pointed out to James that I felt like a lot of the value proposition for TOT is not fully appreciated or understood by the market and that it would be great to see them pop up on investing podcasts or in AFR coverage etc. to build investor interest.
He said they are looking into doing some webinars soon which would give the other holders on this forum a chance to ask their own questions.
I hope some of this is helpful.
