Next has completed the £107m sale and leaseback of some of its warehouses and is in advanced talks to sell and lease back its head office in Enderby, Leicestershire for £48m.
Earlier this month the retailer appointed Acre to sell three warehouses located in South Elmsall, between Wakefield and Doncaster, as well as Savills on the Leicester HQ sale.
Aviva Investors bought the warehouses on behalf of its Lime Property Fund. Combined, they measure more than 1.2m sq ft.
The retailer said the deals combined would generate £155m in cash resources for the company to use to offset the impact of coronavirus on dwindling customer demand.
Next said it had enough liquidity to navigate a 40% decline in full-price scales during the year, after revising its worst-case stress test scenario.
During the period from 26 January to 25 April, retail sales fell by 52% year-on-year, while online dropped by 32%. It temporarily halted its warehousing operations for 18 days from 26 March.
Next has also outlined plans to re-open stores after lockdown measures are eased.
Larger, out-of-town store openings will be prioritised, since it is easier to manage social distancing in these types of locations.
Out-of-town retail parks have large car parks, and outside space available to manage queues. Larger stores also tend to trade longer hours, reducing the numbers of people at any one time.
Next added that these locations also offer larger and more senior management teams to supervise safety measures. Area and regional management teams will be better placed to “manage and monitor safety measures in a small number of large stores, than a large number of small stores”.
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