Blackstone Eyes £6B Indurent Exit As Logistics M&A Heats Up

In what is shaping up to be a blockbuster period of mergers and acquisitions in the industrial and logistics sector, investors are weighing up the prospects for the sale of two companies valued at almost £20B.

Indurent, the company created by Blackstone in February 2024 by merging Industrials REIT and St Modwen Logistics, has started exploring investor engagement as the firm looks towards a potential London listing or sale, according to Bloomberg.

The firm, one of the largest warehouse owners in the UK, could be valued at about £6B after around £2B in acquisitions and developments since Blackstone formed the platform, which spans 39M SF — though any deal is likely to be at least 18 months away.

Blackstone has since bought Warehouse REIT and invested in Tritax Big Box REIT. It declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Segro investors are pushing Prologis to improve its all-stock offer for the UK’s largest publicly traded property company, a potential £12.6B deal that would come with a growing pipeline of data centre assets but which has so far been firmly rejected by the Segro board.

Prologis’ initial offer sits at the same value as Segro’s underlying assets, and the approach represents the biggest takeover attempt of a publicly traded European property firm. Segro has been trading at a persistent discount to its net asset value since interest rates began to climb in 2022.

After issuing a strong initial rebuttal, Segro followed up with a statement from Chairman Andy Harrison, who said: “Prologis is trying to acquire Segro on the cheap when our share price has been dislocated by the Middle East conflict and at a price that reflects none of the quality, scarcity and growth embedded in the business. 

Segro has also agreed heads of terms for the formation of a 50-50 joint venture with PSP to develop and operate three major UK logistics parks of approximately 10M SF, with a fully developed gross asset value of approximately £3B. 

Analysts at Jefferies Financial Group said in a note that it believed Prologis could offer an additional 80p to £1.40 per share, while Green Street predicted a 5% to 10% bump in the price Prologis will offer.