No. of Recommendations: 3
Interesting thread. Not a company I had looked at but will make a point of doing so now.
"The only challenge I would make to your article, is the quality of the assets. The are high quality but if there was a major drop in university demand (and I don't think that is on the cards), I would expect them to be hit quite hard. I get the impression the properties are high density student properties that would be expensive to convert to something else. But yes, the properties would still have value. I don't see much evidence that student numbers will drop off, so that's not a problem currently. (However, it is getting very expensive to go to university and there may be less jobs for graduates in future. You could certainly make a case that it would make financial sense for a lot of youths, to learn a trade and avoid student debt and the risk of being unemployed in the new AI world. But its a hard enough sell to an 18 year old to learn a trade and many are not suited to it. Then again, maybe the AI use cases are only beginning to become apparent. Maybe university demand will soften. I don't know.)"
My first thought when I saw the fall in price mentioned was that it may have been because of the threat to demand.
There has been a growing trend to bring in international students as they pay higher fees I think than domestic ones. In recent months there has been a lot of talk about the impact of students on the immigration figures - and how the government will look to tighten up rules in this space (granted, this might be aimed more at non degree students but I think there was some discussion around the number of students remaining in the UK once their studies finished). Secondly, there were other comments I think by government figures recently distancing themselves from New Labour's target for people going to university.
I would imagine though with relatively low debt for a REIT, and if the asset values are fairly accurate that even if the demand side did dry up then the sites could be repurposed for a profit, providing some safety here.
