GTC eyes up to 7.0 mln euro from sale of three Romanian properties

The company has entered into an agreement to sell three shopping centers in Romania in order to improve its operating performance, GTC said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The transaction provides an estimated value of approximately 6-7 million euro for three small-size shopping centers comprising between 10,000 and 14,000 sq m of net rentable area, located in Buzau, Piatra Neamt and Suceava which are second-tier and third tier cities in Romania," the company said.

The GTC group said in the statment its third-quarter net loss of 28 million euro is attributable mostly to the three assets in Romania, which the company decided to sell below book value.

The transaction will improve GTC's cash flow and profit and loss statement by 3.0 to 4.0 million euro on an annual basis since the properties were loss making, the statement added.

The buyer is an international private investor.

The sale purchase agreement is expected to be finalized in the first quarter of next year.

GTC said it decided to exit small-retail division and focus on its large scale shopping centers due to the change in market conditions, relatively high operational costs for smaller assets, and their different tenant mix which results in lack of synergies with the group's larger retail assets.

Apart from Romania, GTC also operates in Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Russia and Ukraine.

($ = 0.7857 euro)