Abacus' has ambitions to grow their Self Storage portfolio which includes 81 assets worth over $1bn, together with a 25% stake in operator, Storage King. Up until this week, the group has also held a 4.6% interest in National Storage REIT, but has not lifted this to 7%.
The National Storage REIT was the Centre of 3 way bidding war when ESR Warburg, GAW Capital and US based, Public Storage each proposed take over offers for the group. Public Storage too the lead and progressed to due dilligence before COVID interruptions saw the group step back from the proposal.
The stock price has since fallen -50% before recovering at -35% from its recent high and the group has raised over $500m of additional capital (debt & equity) to protect its balance sheet.
Abacus picked up its interest in the Group, however were excluded from the capital raising process in early May. When considering the institutional placements, the Board of NSR took into account that Abacus is a direct competitor of NSR and the Board did not view Abacus as a supportive long term holder of NSR securities, deciding it was not in the best interests of securityholders for Abacus to participate in the placement.
Since then, Abacus has stepped up its expansion on the National Storage register, building toward what could become a blocking stake should a full-fledged takeover battle flare up again.
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