One of Atlanta’s most prominent office landlords announced Friday it aims to raise nine figures through a public stock sale to finance the purchase of a glitzy office complex in North Carolina.
Cousins Properties plans to sell 6 million shares of its common stock next week to raise money to buy Vantage South End, a 639,000-square-foot office complex in Charlotte. The Atlanta-based company said it has priced its underwritten public offering, which it expects will generate gross proceeds of about $188 million.
The stock issuance was first announced Thursday, and the net proceeds will be used to fund a portion of the purchase price for Vantage South End. Cousins also said it’s under contact to buy the office property for nearly $329 million in a transaction it estimates will close in December.
Colin Connolly, Cousins CEO, said in a press release that it’s “an off-market transaction at a meaningful discount to replacement cost.” That’s industry-speak for the cost to build a new building just like it.
“Cousins remains focused on identifying compelling opportunities to invest in highly-amenitized lifestyle office assets in the Sun Belt,” he said.
In recent earnings calls, Connolly said his company is focused on identifying high-end office properties that may be undervalued, given the national office market’s struggles after the COVID-19 pandemic. In Atlanta, nearly a third of all office square footage is either empty or available to lease, according to real estate services firm CBRE.
The commercial real estate slump and high interest rates have made finding traditional bank loans to finance real estate acquisitions and development more of a challenge. That’s left buyers who have cash with an advantage.
Cousins has been aggressive this year in identifying acquisition targets.
Over the summer, Cousins partnered with New York-based Town Lane to buy Proscenium, a 526,000-square-foot building along 14th and Peachtree streets near Colony Square in Midtown, for $83 million. It was a 43% discount from the last time the building changed hands in 2017.
Vantage South End is located in Charlotte’s South End submarket and consists of two towers that were completed in 2021 and 2022, respectively. It’s currently 97% leased with a weighted average lease term of more than nine years.
The stock offering is expected to close Tuesday with BofA Securities acting as the sole book-running manager for the sale.
If the Vantage South End acquisition falls through, Cousins said the net proceeds of the stock offering will be used for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition and development of other office properties, other investments and the repayment of debt.
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