It was already apparent on Monday that something was happening at the Adler Group real estate company. Just what exactly, that doesn’t seem to be entirely clear on Friday either. Only the reaction of investors is clear: By the end of trading, the share listed in the S-Dax had lost almost a fifth of its value – and that within just one week.
Meanwhile, it looked like a clear recovery: On Friday morning it became known that the Dax group Vonovia secured the option of 13.3 percent on the much smaller rival from the largest Adler shareholder, the investment company Aggregate of the Austrian investor Günther Walcher Has. For 18 months and at a price of 14 euros. The Adler share then increased by more than twelve percent at times – but later turned again significantly into the red and was recently quoted four percent higher.
In return for the option for the Adler package, Vonovia is granting Aggregate a loan “in the low three-digit million range and at the usual conditions,” said a company spokeswoman. It is pursuing two goals: on the one hand, the apartments could be strategically interesting, on the other hand, it is also about reassuring the market and investors in the real estate industry.
Adler claims to have a real estate portfolio worth 12.6 billion euros, including around 70,000 apartments in northern Germany and Berlin. As is usual with real estate companies, these are largely financed through debt. Earlier this week, Adler had surprisingly announced that it was considering selling a large part of the apartments in order to reduce debt and buy back shares. This initially gave the price a boost.
Just two days later, however, on Wednesday, the shortseller Fraser Perring published a report on the company. In it, he accuses Adler, among other things, of inflating the balance sheet. In addition, the management withdraws money from acquired companies. As a result of the report, the share even collapsed by a third in the meantime. Perring is well known in the scene: Among other things, he attacked the payment service provider Wirecard in 2016 and the leasing company Grenke in 2020 – in some cases with success. However, Perring bets professionally on falling prices and also works with aggressive studies, the allegations of which cannot always be kept. For this reason, some consider him a market manipulator.
Adler denies the allegations. The value of the portfolio as well as acquisitions is proven by external auditors. The company now wants to hire independent consultants and auditors to review the allegations.