Category: Liquidation

Corporate Liquidation: abrdn European Logistics Income $ASLI

This is not an investment advice, make your own research before investing

I discover this opportunity through the Liquidation Stocks Substack, which I highly recommend (check his Substack and X account).

I also suggest reading the analysis by Real Assets Value, which covers real estate valuation better than I do. My focus is mainly on balance sheet valuation and my thoughts on the quality of the lease clients and properties.

abrd European Logistics Income is an investment trust that focuses on acquiring and managing logistics properties.

Due to liquidity issues and the company consistently trading at a discount from its Net Asset Value (NAV), the board and management decided to liquidate the trust after a strategic review. This was announced on May 20, 2024, in a press release.

We know that the company invests in high-quality logistics properties with reliable tenants and inflation-linked contracts.

According to the 2024 Annual Report, the company’s property portfolio includes:

Here is the history of properties sold by the company:

  • March 2024: A warehouse in Meung, France, sold for €17.5 million (matching its book value).
  • January 2025: A property in Oss, Netherlands, sold for €15.7 million (1.9% above its 2023 book value).
  • January 2025: Two properties in Spain (Coslada, Madrid, and Barcelona) sold for €29.7 million (11% above their Q3 2024 valuation).

In May 2025, the company announced (in its latest unaudited NAV update) that five assets are under offer. After repaying the debt, the proceeds will be distributed to shareholders.

Historically, the company has sold properties at or above their book value, often with a premium. I am confident this trend will continue.

According to the May 2025 unaudited NAV update:

At the current exchange rate of €0.845 = £0.71, with the share price at 59.40 GBX, there is a potential upside of approximately 19%.

Real Asset Value estimated the liquidation timeline to be 12–18 months, while Liquidation Stocks predicted 2 years. I believe it will be closer to 2 years, which suggests an Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of about 9.09% (quite good).

I opened a position in this special situation at 57.60 GBX.

US Masters Residential Property Fund – Liquidation overview

I found this case on the Special Situation Investments website, which I really recommend. It’s great for anyone interested in special situation ideas, and it’s amazing as educational content if you’re into this topic.

Today, I want to talk about the US Masters Residential Property Fund. It’s a real estate investment trust (REIT) managed externally, listed in Australia, but owning properties in the USA.

A bit of history: In March 2022, the company announced a deal to sell itself at a low price (0.22 AUD per share, compared to its value of 0.68 AUD per share). A fund called Raper Capital wrote a letter to the management, complaining about how bad the deal was. (You should read the letter—it’s really interesting!) Then, in April 2022, because of rising interest rates and inflation, the buyer canceled the deal. After that, the company decided to voluntarily liquidate meaning it would close down and sell everything. They also turned preferred stock into ordinary shares in 2023, an idea Raper Capital had suggested in their letter.

So, let’s dive into the numbers in detail (based on the 2024FY last report):

The first table shows the company’s Net Asset Value, or NAV, which is the total value of its assets minus its debts. The company has properties worth 710 million AUD, plus cash of 83.372 million AUD. After subtracting its debts (liabilities) of 411.238 million AUD, the NAV is 382.994 million AUD. The company has 708 million shares, and the current share price is 0.40 AUD.

The second table gives two estimates for 2028, when the company plans to finish selling all its properties. I made some assumptions based:

  • Discount on selling price compared to book value: The properties are listed at their market price in the company balance sheet. But according to the company’s press releases, they usually sell properties at a price between -2% and +2% of the book value (on average). I used a 1% discount for the normal estimate and a -1% discount (meaning a small gain) for the optimistic estimate.
  • Transaction costs: These are the costs of selling the properties, like fees for agents or legal paperwork. On average, this is 5% of the sale price, but I used 2.5% for the optimistic estimate. I got this information from the company’s press releases.
  • 2028 deadline: This is the estimated year when all properties will be sold.

To keep things simple for this activity, I didn’t include some future costs, like:

  • Management fees: The company is managed by two external companies, Brookville and Pinnacle. Their fees can change every year based on inflation (CPI), but I left this out for now.
  • Taxes: The company changed from being a REIT to a US corporate structure, so it now has to pay federal and state taxes. However, it can use past losses to lower its taxes, which reduced its tax bill from 40 million AUD to 3 million AUD. I didn’t include taxes in my calculations.
  • CAPEX: The company needs to spend money to maintain its properties so they don’t lose value. This will continue until the last property is sold, but I didn’t include these costs here.

Based on my estimates, the distributable NAV (what shareholders might get) could be between 360.014 million AUD (normal case) and 377.249 million AUD (optimistic case). This means a distribution of 0.51 AUD per share in the normal case, or 0.53 AUD per share in the optimistic case.

Compared to the current share price of 0.40 AUD, this could mean a gain of 27.12% to 33.21% for shareholders, which sounds nice. But there’s a problem: this gain will take a long time—at least 3 years. During that time, you might miss other opportunities to make money elsewhere, which is called the “cost of opportunity.” Also, I didn’t include one important thing that could speed things up: the company is doing a share buyback, which means it’s buying back its own shares. This can increase the share price, but it also means the company will have less cash available in the future, and I didn’t consider that in my calculations.

In my opinion, at this price and time, it doesn’t look like a great deal. But it might be worth keeping on our watchlist. We can follow the liquidation process and see what happens. Maybe the company will announce a major distribution, or the stock price might drop a lot, which could make it more interesting to buy later.

Not investment advice!