Logos moving on Qube’s Moorebank hub

The Moorebank facility will process goods from around the country.

Logos Group is poised to enter exclusive due diligence for Qube’s $2 billion Moorebank logistics park by the end of the week, with sources saying that the industrial property owner has put forward a knock-out offer for the land at the Sydney-based inland port.

The company is believed to have fended off competition from Blackstone, Dexus Property Group and the Warburg Pincus-backed ESR.

Qube is scheduled to hold a board meeting around the middle of the week to approve Logos’ move towards an acquisition.

The bullish bid by the Sydney-based company has come as an upset in the contest, with some earlier suspecting that it may not have the fire power to compete with other larger competitors.

Logos is an Australian-based logistics property specialist with operations across the Asia Pacific, with ARA Asset Management as a major shareholder.

ARA has $88bn in gross assets under management globally.

Other investors are Canadian real estate investor Ivanhoe Cambridge, which has $C64bn ($67bn) of real estate assets globally, and Logos founders, including joint managing director John Marsh.

An acquisition will add to the 1.2 million in square metres of logistics real estate across 13 properties that Logos already controls.

It runs the ARA Logos Logistics Trust, a Singapore-listed real estate investment trust with 27 properties across Singapore and Australia.

Working on the sales process since late last year is the outgoing head of real estate at UBS, Tim Church, who will soon move to Morgan Stanley, where he will be chairman in Australia after handing in his resignation to the Swiss bank in recent weeks.

It is understood that final bids were received a number of days ago and a meeting was held about the process on Friday.

Most have expected Qube to sell between 50 and 75 per cent of the logistics park’s land trust and warehouse trust, worth $2bn, with Qube to retain the terminals trust.

The transaction is shaping up as the largest mergers and acquisition for 2020 in the real estate space.

While the global health crisis has weighed on landlords, the industrial property sector is seen as one of the most resilient, with online shopping in strong demand and offering some relief to the economic fallout.

The yet-to-be-completed Moorebank intermodal facility, in southwest Sydney, is the largest in the country, with the park covering 243ha.

It is being developed on a precinct comprising land owned by the Commonwealth and adjacent to land owned by Qube.

Woolworths is a key tenant.

Qube is selling the logistics park at a time that it is investing capital into its business.

In April, it raised $500m in equity to lower its debt levels, which are now at about 26 per cent of its earnings.