PGIM Real Estate sells Rock Square in Guangzhou, China
PGIM Real Estate has sold Rock Square, a shopping mall in Guangzhou, China, on behalf of institutional investors. PGIM Real Estate is the real estate investment business of PGIM, the $1 trillion global investment management businesses of Prudential Financial.
Rock Square is a five-story, multi-anchor regional mall located in Guangzhou’s Haizhu district, a middle-class residential neighborhood. Comprising 899,766 square feet of retail space, the mall sits above the interchange station of Guangzhou Subway Line 1 and Foshan Express Line.
Rock Square was largely vacant when PGIM Real Estate acquired the property in 2012. Over time, the company successfully leased the mall to a wide range of domestic and international tenants including Aeon, Zara, Uniqlo, Stradivarius, and Pull & Bear. It is currently 96.3 percent leased.
“I am pleased with the significant value we were able to bring to our investors through our ownership of Rock Square and its successful sale,” said Benett Theseira, head of Asia Pacific for PGIM Real Estate. “By employing active asset management strategies through repositioning the tenant mix and initiatives to significantly boost shopper traffic, we enhanced the property’s performance. This enabled us to capitalize on increased investor appetite for high-quality, well-positioned real estate assets across China.”
In November 2017 IREN reported CapitaLand and CapitaLand Retail China Trust (CRCT) formed a joint venture to acquire all the shares in a company that owns an operational shopping mall, currently known as Rock Square. The sales price was $521 million.
CRCT is the majority shareholder with a 51 percent stake in the joint venture, while CapitaLand owns the remaining 49 percent. This marks CapitaLand’s second mall and CRCT’s first in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong Province in South China and one of four first-tier cities in China.
