Copyright thenassauguardian
The Bahamas Property Fund’s $10 million Carmichael Road storage facility will be operational from Q1, 2026. Gerhard Beukes, vice president and group head of fund development and management at RF Bank and Trust, the fund manager for BPF, told Guardian Business yesterday on the release of their Q2, 2025 financials that the storage facility on Carmichael Road will be a yielding asset that would add to the fund’s bottom line. Beukes added: “It’s about 340 units, and we expect that to be operational from Q1 2026, so that means that once the asset is fully developed, that’s a good example of how we grow our portfolio, because it shows that we develop an asset, and then we do what we have to do in terms of building it, and then it becomes a yielding asset.” BPF’s investment property values increased from $48,687,855 in December, 2024 to $57,754,324 by the end of June 2025. Income remained relatively flat, increasing from $1,805,885 to $1,837,176 over the same period. Beukes noted: “That’s why you would have seen an increase in assets, but you haven’t seen an increase in profitability, and actually, on a short-term basis, you may even see a dip in profitability, but that’s as we make more acquisitions. “There’s obviously transaction fees, there’s due diligence costs, etc... So there will always be a little bit in profitability as the nature of the fund changes a little bit, and we make acquisitions, that would always be the case.” BPF has several target properties set up for 2026, but Beukes is not at liberty to discuss them due to the sensitivity of the negotiations. “But the focus will always be that we’re looking for yielding assets and even though there are some assets that we acquired for the purpose of seeking whether we can redevelop those, because they’re in strategically significant locations, we always want to remain in a position for cash yield,” he said. Beukes continued: “So the overriding thing is that we’re always looking at what’s the most appropriate instrument to raise capital for new transactions, and while issuing additional equity is an avenue that we will look at again in, 2026, I think the existing preference share offering that is outstanding, that’s about a $30 million facility, of which we’ve drawn down, we’ve still got headroom on that facility. “The uptake from investors has been extremely strong, and the demand from investors for that product has been really strong as well. So I think we may look at those programs again, or maybe a separate one, but the overall objective is always to increase the existing shareholder value and create more shareholder value. That’s always the core objective that we have. So whichever instrument we do, we would want to increase and maintain shareholder value.”
