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Blackstone, real estate investor has filed draft papers with market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for India’s first-ever pure-play retail mall REIT (real estate investment trust) IPO. If plans fructify, this would be the private equity giant’s third REIT listing in India, following the Embassy REIT and the Mindspace REIT, which made their market debuts earlier.
“The e-filing of the DRHP (draft red herring prospectus) has been done with Sebi. The plan is to raise $500 million via the proposed IPO which will involve a $200 million primary component and a $300 million secondary component,” said one of the people mentioned above. He warned that the size may be upsized or downsized later based on market conditions. Blackstone was targeting a valuation of $3 billion to $3.2 billion for the REIT, which will be called Nexus Select Trust, and the IPO was likely to be launched during Q1 2023.
Nexus Malls is the Indian retail portfolio arm of Blackstone and the REIT will also include assets from Delhi’s premium mall Select City Walk (which has the highest sales per sq ft in the country) and Bengaluru-based real estate developer Prestige Group.
“The promoters of Select City Walk and Prestige Group will be minority shareholders in the REIT while Blackstone is the majority shareholder. Post-COVID, one has seen a sharp uptick in mall sales, footfalls, and occupancies, and the total size of the REIT portfolio will be around 10 mn sq ft,”
Nexus Mall has Grade A retail space across locations ranging from Indore and Chandigarh to Bengaluru and Navi Mumbai. The firm, which is the largest mall operator in the country, has acquired 17 malls in 13 cities. During the pandemic, it clinched a $1.2 billion deal to acquire seven to eight ’Forum’ malls from the Prestige Group and was reportedly looking to also acquire Select Citywalk.
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