Pontegadea Acquires 5 Logistics Centers for $722M

Zara founder Amancio Ortega’s investment firm, Pontegadea, has acquired five logistics centers from Realty Income Corp. for $722M, in a deal first reported by the Spanish daily El Pais.

The industrial properties are located in Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas. The properties have long-term leases with global players including Amazon, Nestle and FedEx.

Ortega has a 59% ownership stake of Inditex SA, the world’s largest apparel retailer, which owns the fashion chain Zara and several other brands. He reportedly is the richest person in Spain, with a net worth estimated at $46.8B by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

According to a report in Bloomberg, the five-property acquisition is the latest in a series of industrial deals Pontegadea has made with Realty Income that now total more than $900M in assets.

Prior to these moves into the industrial market, Ortega’s firm, which has a global property portfolio worth an estimated $16B, has focused on acquiring office and residential properties.

Earlier this year, Pontegadea closed a $1.2B acquisition of Toronto’s Royal Bank Plaza office tower. The firm also paid $500M to purchase a 64-story apartment tower in New York City.

Earlier this month, Pontegadea announced the acquisition for $148M of a 1M SF distribution center in Philadelphia. The facility, located at 2670 Red Lion Road, is leased to TJX Cos. as a fulfillment center for the company’s Marshalls retail brand.

Realty Income acquired the Philadelphia warehouse as part of its takeover of VeREIT last year. VeREIT purchased the distribution center in 2019 for $97M.

According to its Q2 earnings report, Realty Income sold six VeREIT-owned industrial properties in the second quarter for a total of $905M. the earnings report said the company expects to unload another VeREIT property in the third quarter.

In April 2021, Realty Income, which specialized in net-lease retail properties, merged with VeREIT in an $11B deal that created a company with an estimated combined portfolio of $50B.

At the time of the merger, Realty Income owned 6,500 CRE assets totaling 111M SF, primarily in retail, with tenants including Walgreens, 7-Eleven, Dollar General, Circle K and Speedway. VeREIT’s portfolio included 3,800 in assets totaling 90M SF.

When the merger closed, Realty said it would spin off the office properties in the portfolio into a separate company, with Realty focusing on net-leased retail and industrial assets.