DLF shortlists 6 potential buyers for promoters’ 40 per cent stake in rental arm

NEW DELHI: India's largest real estate developer DLF has shortlisted six potential buyers for 40% stake of the promoters in its rental arm DLF Cyber City Developers Limited that is expected to sell for about Rs 13,000 crore, two people aware of the development said.

The company had invited expressions of interest and received 11offers over the past few weeks. It has now shortlisted GIC, Blackstone, Warburg Pincus, Brookfield Asset Management, a consortium of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Kotak Realty Fund and Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), and another fund whose name could not be ascertained, said one of the persons, who did not wish to be identified.

The others who had shown interest include Temasek, Khazanah, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Goldman Sachs, he said. "The shortlisted funds have put in offers of .Rs 12,000-13,000 crore for the stake. They will now do their final due over the next one month before concluding negotiations take place," he said.DLF, Blackstone, Warburg Pincus and ADIA declined to comment. Email questionnaires sent to GIC, Brookfield Asset Management, Kotak Realty Fund and QIA did not elicit any response till late evening on Thursday.

In October last year, DLF had said that its promoters would sell 40% stake in the company's rental arm and that the promoters would reinvest a substantial portion of the sum raised through the transaction back into DLF after paying tax and other charges.

Post this transaction, DLF plans to wipe out the debt in its development arm in a bid to de-risk its business model on the residential side.

The rental business, on the other hand, will then be run in partnership with the new investor, along with a plan to launch a real estate investment trust.

"The decision on the final partner will also be based on the commitment of the partner to support DLF to grow the overall portfolio of rental assets and also what the investment horizon of the fund is," said the second person.

DLF's assets include office buildings in Gurgaon's prime office hub of Cyber City and in other cities such as Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata where blue chip companies occupy office space.

It has more than 30 million sq ft of leased commercial and retail space which generates annual rental income of about Rs 2,600 crore for the company. This is expected to grow to about Rs 3,000 crore by the end of this financial year.

Of the total leased space, 26.8 million sq ft is housed in DLF Cyber City Developers and the rent attributable to this company was about .Rs 2,250 crore at the end of March 2016.

Over the past two years, as older longterm leases have ended, DLF has been able to raise rentals at Cyber City to more than Rs 100 per sq ft per month as vacancy level dropped to low single digits. To manage the additional demand for space, DLF recently started construction of a new 2.2 million sq ft office building in the vicinity.