Abacus Group is a ASX 200 public listed company that specialises in investing in Australian

Real estate investment trust A real estate investment trust (REIT, pronounced "reet") is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of real estate, including office and apartment buildings, studios, warehouses, hos ...

s with an investment portfolio concentrated in the Office and Self Storage sectors. They manage legacy investments in property developments. The company was known as Abacus Property Group until August 2023, when they split off their self-storage business, Abacus Storage King.

History

Abacus was established in 1996 by an academic from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

, Dr Frank Wolf, listing on the

Australian Securities Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd (ASX) is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary Exchange (organized market), securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or c ...

in November 2002.

Operations

It has a single corporate office in Sydney, Australia. The current chair is the South-African born, Myra Salkinder. The CEO Steven Sewell was appointed in 2018 after leaving

Vicinity Centres Vicinity Centres , previously known as Federation Centres and Centro Properties Group, is an Australian Real Estate Investment Trust specialising in the ownership and management of Australian shopping centres. As at December 2021, it had stake ...

. The group's investment portfolio is divided into four divisions: office spaces, self-storage facilities, retail shopping centres and industrial properties. It also owns some historically notable buildings, such as the late art-deco Minerva Theatre near Kings Cross in Sydney. The group's asset portfolio is heavily weighted to office towers, such as 201 Elizabeth Street in Sydney, the Brisbane Club and RAA Place in Adelaide. Its first major investment success was purchasing the heritage listed

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building at 343 George Street, Sydney for $55 million and sold it the next year for $78 million. As of 2021, the group is considered to be highly exposed to downturn in office spaces since the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

led to fewer office workers working from their office. While the group primarily invests in commercial property assets, such as office towers most of its recent growth has been in self-storage units, a sector buoyed by the storage needs of Australia's growing e-commerce industry. In 2020, Abacus acquired Storage King Pty Ltd, buying the remaining $50m of shares. In early 2021 it purchased a further four self storage facilities in Adelaide and Sydney, along with the remaining 60% of the Oasis Centre in Queensland. In 2019, the group began divesting from the residential property sector.

References

External links

* {{S&P/ASX 200 Companies based in Sydney Companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange Australian brands