German landlord TAG falls to loss amid property crisis

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -TAG Immobilien, one of Germany's biggest residential landlords, fell to a $449 million loss in 2023 as Europe's largest economy is weighed down by its worst real-estate crisis in decades, figures on Tuesday showed.

The loss followed further writedowns in the value of its property holdings, and the company said it would suspend dividend payments for the second consecutive year to strengthen its capital position

The company's shares were down 3.3% by mid-morning in Frankfurt, bringing declines to nearly 10% since the beginning of the year.

But Martin Thiel, TAG's finance chief and co-chief executive officer, said he was optimistic that valuation declines were bottoming out.

TAG posted a yearly loss of 410.9 million euros ($449.4 million), compared with a net profit of 117.3 million euros in 2022.

TAG said that it had written down its portfolio by 4.1% in the second half of the year, after a 7.4% decrease in the first half, bringing values down 16% from their peak in mid-2022.

Thiel said further decreases in 2024 would not be "material" and reiterated his view that the total decline from the peak was expected to be around 20%.

On Monday, TAG's larger competitor LEG Immobilien also reported a full-year loss after writedowns but said the "peak of the real estate crisis is behind us".

($1 = 0.9144 euros)

(Reporting by Tom Sims and Matthias Inverardi; Editing by Bartosz Dabrowski and Kim Coghill)