Zara Seeks $472 Million For 16 Stores

The company plan to sell 14 Zara stores in Spain and two in Portugal.

Zara Owner Inditex is seeking $472 million (400 million euros) for the stores in a 20-year sale-and-leaseback arrangement that would give the customer the right to leave the properties after five years, according to a person with knowledge of the topic. According to Bloomberg, fourteen of the spaces are in Spain and two in Portugal, the person said, asking not to be recognized because the transaction is private.

An Inditex official approved the potential sale and said it’s element of a strategy to homogenize its leasing strategy. Leases operate nearly all its stores, the official continued. The spokesperson did not confirm the proposal price.

Inditex, whose 11.7 billion euros in first-half income was increased by a rise in online sales, is betting Spain will catch up with the rest of Europe in internet shopping. Last year, three shares of Spanish retail sales were done via the internet, matched with 8 percent beyond Europe and 15 percent in the U.K., according to experts.

“While Spain has the lowest absorption of internet sales now, it’s expected to have the highest growth rate” in coming years “as cultural attitudes toward online shopping change,” told Andrew Allen, global head of real estate investment research at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “We estimate annual growth in internet purchases of 18 percent per year to 2021 for Spain, versus an average of 12 percent for Europe as a whole.”

The sites up for sale cover the Zara women’s fashion store in Calle Preciados, Madrid’s most upscale shopping street regarding retail rents. Inditex was established in 1963 as a family-run workshop making affordable apparel for women and has more than 7,000 stores in 94 countries.

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