White Stone Development (WSD), one of the leaders in the Polish real estate market, is entering a new era. After years of financing its investments primarily from its own resources and domestic debt, the company has decided to broaden its horizons and for the first time in its history, it has partnered with an international fund. Thanks to this decision, WSD has ambitious development plans for 2025, increasing the scale of projects it undertakes and adapting its offer to the changing realities of the housing market.
Partnership with NREP Fund – a new impulse for development
In October 2024, White Stone Development announced the signing of a key agreement with NREP, a Scandinavian real estate fund specializing in individual rental investment projects. The NSF V fund allocated an amount exceeding 200 million PLN for the implementation of the Warsaw project in Młociny. This is the first such large investment of a foreign investor in cooperation with WSD, opening up new possibilities for the company, both in terms of capital and operational.
Anna Suchodolska, the co-CEO of White Stone Development emphasizes, “So far, in order to implement our projects, we mainly used our own resources and debt, but cooperation with a foreign fund is another step in the development of our company. Thanks to this, we can carry out larger-scale projects with a more diversified financial structure”.
Success on the Catalyst Market and New Opportunities
Before White Stone Development signed the agreement with NREP, the company was already a stable participant in the corporate debt market, regularly issuing debt securities on the Catalyst market. Since its debut on this market in January 2021, the company performed 11 issuances with a total value of nearly 180 million PLN. The vast majority of them were redeemed according to schedule, and the last issuance from June 2024, worth 25 million PLN, ended successfully, at the lowest margin in history – 4.4% per year.
The financial results for the first half of 2024 also provide grounds for optimism. The capital group earned net profit of over 26 million PLN, which represents a fourfold increase compared to the equivalent period of the previous year. Thanks to this stable financial situation, the company has gained more freedom in implementing new, ambitious projects.
New Strategy: Flexibility and Bold Entry into New Areas
In 2024, WSD also announced a new development strategy, which implies, among others, moving away from office investments in favor of housing projects. As Katarzyna Szymborska, co-CEO of WSD highlights, “We made a decision to exit the office space market. Completed sales transactions of two office projects allowed us to focus more on the promising residential markets and investments associated with new technologies”. Fort Mokotów project remains the only office project in the portfolio, attracting considerable attention from tenants due to its unique atmosphere of the restored part of the Warsaw Fortress.
WSD’s new projects will focus on the Warsaw, suburban (Zamienia) and Szczecin markets. The company does not exclude further expansion into other local markets. As Suchodolska notes, “We are open to cooperation with other foreign funds and the implementation of targeted investments, especially in the residential segment”. These investments will meet the increasing demand of customers and also innovative technological solution.
In the coming years, a significant scale increase in residential investment is anticipated in Poland. Companies gain flexibility and the ability to adapt their business model to the changing realities of the housing market, which is becoming more varied in terms of consumer needs and expectations. The actions taken by White Stone Development, including the use of foreign funds for design, demonstrate the importance of a flexible approach to financing and sensitivity to real estate market trends.
“We want to increase our presence in the residential and commercial real estate market, implement larger-scale projects in a more diversified financial structure, while considering changing market expectations and customer needs” – the representatives of White Stone Development emphasized.
Source: https://managerplus.pl/white-stone-development-staje-sie-bardziej-otwarty-na-zagraniczne-fundusze-i-elastyczny-na-rynku-inwestycji-mieszkaniowych-96675
