Strategy and development

After a phase of refocusing on its property activity and rebalancing its property portfolio towards retail buildings, Affine continues its strategy of optimizing the management of its portfolio. Affine mainly seeks to enhance the quality and profitability of the buildings, strengthen relationships with tenants and improve cost control.

Improving the quality of assets represents a medium-term priority for the Group. The drop in value resulting from the crisis has slowed asset turnover on the market, thus reducing acquisition opportunities. It has also created a significant slowdown in the construction of new buildings. This situation is reinforced by increasingly strict construction standards in addition to greater user sensitivity to environmental issues.

Therefore the targeted renovation of selected buildings meets the requirements of both tenants and shareholders. By offering a higher-quality working environment, renovation often allows an extension of leases, thus securing rents, and a better valuation of the property. This closer relationship with tenants creates a fair balance which is not confined solely to financial dimension.

The optimization of the property portfolio is also reflected in the continued disposal of buildings that no longer meet the Group’s strategy in terms of size, maturity, or cost of refurbishment to comply with environmental standards.

In parallel, the Group wishes to resume an active growth policy, either through building acquisitions or through the purchase of portfolios of buildings or companies meeting its criteria of profitability and risk.

Affine operates in major French cities in the regions and occasionally in smaller towns with a strong development potential, and more specifically cities served by the high-speed train (TGV). By helping to revitalize cities and define the urban landscape of tomorrow, through a close relationship with local communities, Affine promotes the development of their economic environment and of their urban fabric.

Commercial properties in regional cities offer more value stability and higher yields than in Paris, where the market is affected by more speculative behaviors. Affine's long term investor approach and geographic and asset type diversification, protects the Group from the obstacles faced by some investors on these markets, especially due to their more shallow presence. Affine already has a well-established presence in regional capitals such as Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille and Nantes. Affine is still present in Paris and the Paris region.

As a multi-specialist, the Group is capable of seizing opportunities that seem to offer the higher potential for creating value on the three asset types of offices, retail and warehouses. Affine's human-scale industrial approach is based on a single platform for property management, while enabling the tailor-made processing of requests from each of its tenants through its specialized asset managers. The Group wants to develop this principle in the medium to long term to provide more service and to increase the loyalty of its customers.