First Property Group is an AIM-listed property company. It manages commercial property funds for outside investors and owns offices and shops in Poland, mostly in Warsaw. After a £4.4m loss in the year to March 2024, it made £3.4m in the year to March 2026, cut net debt to £6m and restored a dividend. The funds it manages for others have shrunk from £400m to £144m over three years.
Fund manager and landlord in Poland, the UK and Romania
The company is quoted on AIM and has offices in London and Warsaw. It earns money in two ways. Its regulated subsidiary, First Property Asset Management (FPAM), runs property funds for third parties and charges fees. The Group Properties side invests the company's own money, usually with partners.
At 31 March 2026 the company directly owned five properties in Poland. It also held stakes in nine of the eleven funds FPAM manages. Blue Tower, an office building in Warsaw where it holds 80.3%, makes up 72% of the directly owned property by market value. Third-party funds under management were £144m, 71% of it in Poland, 23% in the UK and 6% in Romania. By value, 47% of the managed assets are offices and 37% shopping centres.
The company says it focuses on higher-yielding commercial property with sustainable cash flows. The company has not said when it was founded or listed. 25 Jun 2026 19 Jun 2025
Rate shock and a half-empty office in Gdynia
In the year to March 2023 the company made £2.49m before tax and paid a 0.50p dividend. Third-party funds under management stood at £400m. Then interest rates rose. In June 2024 chief executive Ben Habib blamed higher US rates pulling capital out of markets such as Poland, along with pressure on values, scarce bank debt, weaker economies and Net Zero rules. Institutions left the sector.
The year to March 2024 ended with a £4.41m loss. Two non-cash charges drove it: a £3.7m write-down of the Gdynia office building in Poland, and a £0.97m fall in the value of its stake in Fprop Opportunities (FOP). Gdynia was only about 30% leased in May 2024 and carried €12m of deferred consideration, money still owed to the seller. The company said it was in talks to restructure that debt. 26 Jun 2024 23 Nov 2023 23 Oct 2023 17 May 2024
“Nevertheless, we are managing the situation and once US interest rates begin to ease we would expect a recovery in the UK and Europe.” 26 Jun 2024
Cuts, a new tenant and a share issue
In July 2024 the company announced two things. A 15-year lease of 3,100 sq m in Blue Tower to TV República was due to add about £800,000 a year to profit from December 2024. And overhead cuts would save about £650,000 a year, with the full effect due in the year to March 2026. Mr Habib also took a voluntary 15% salary cut.
In September 2024 it raised £2.96m through an open offer at 8p a share, a 52.4% discount to the market price. Two directors underwrote it, and 83.63% of the offer was taken up by existing shareholders. The money went on a deferred Blue Tower payment, the tenant's fit-out and incentives for other tenants. The shares drifted from about 18p in mid-2024 to around 13p by early 2025.
Gdynia did not recover. Its owning subsidiary was put into administration on 30 April 2025 after the debt restructuring failed. It left the group's accounts, which removed most of the group's debt. 25 Jul 2024 3 Sep 2024 19 Sep 2024 23 Apr 2025 30 Apr 2025
Back to profit, then a smaller fund business
The year to March 2025 brought a £3.03m profit. Write-downs on Polish property fell to £0.24m, and the stake in Fprop Phoenix (FPL), an associate, added £1.73m after it traded properties. In September 2025 the company said it expected the recovery to last through the following year. The year to March 2026 delivered £3.40m.
Part of that came from selling two properties, a UK commercial building bought during the year and an office in Bucharest. Together they raised £4.17m of sale proceeds and £1.18m of profit. Blue Tower's rent lifted its profit contribution to £1.35m from £0.97m. Gross debt halved to £13m, and net debt fell to £6m. The board proposed a 0.25p final dividend after paying nothing for two years. 19 Jun 2025 24 Sep 2025 27 Nov 2025 25 Jun 2026 24 Sep 2026
Fee business shrinks
The fund management side went the other way. Third-party assets under management fell from £164m to £144m in the latest year. The company lost control of one £27.5m UK property and sold three others. It has not said why control was lost. Revenue from the division fell to £1.61m from £2.26m. Its profit before central overheads dropped to £0.32m from £1.04m. Expired fund mandates and a non-repeated £0.30m payment in lieu of fees explain the drop. 25 Jun 2026
One building, one cycle, one shrinking fee line
The record rests on three things. First, the loss and the AUM decline followed the sharp rise in interest rates and the exit of institutional capital, as management describes it. Second, results depend heavily on a few assets. Gdynia caused the write-down and then the administration. Blue Tower, one building, is now the largest earner among directly owned property. Third, fee income has fallen with the funds. Group profit has recovered through rent, cost cuts, associate gains and one-off sales, not through fund management growth. 26 Jun 2024 30 Apr 2025 25 Jun 2026
Cost cuts, thinner gearing, closely held shares
Management did what it said on the main points. The £800,000 Blue Tower lease went ahead and the cost savings fed through to profit. The company also raised equity, paid down debt and reinstated the dividend. Gdynia was the failure: the restructuring talks ended in administration. In November 2024 the company said institutions were nervous, so it expected to trade property case by case instead of setting up blind-pool funds, which invest before assets are chosen. In November 2023 it had mentioned a new debt division and had not yet made a loan. The company has not mentioned it since.
Mr Habib holds 17.87% of the shares as of October 2026. Part of that sits in Fprop Phoenix, an associate in which he owns 72.71%. Phoenix bought about 1.4m FPO shares between September and October 2026 at 14p to 15p. Peter Gyllenhammar AB raised its stake from 20.03% to 29.06% between December 2023 and November 2025. At the 24 September 2026 AGM the company withdrew three resolutions after proxy votes showed they would fail. The input does not say which resolutions. 21 Nov 2024 23 Nov 2023 24 Sep 2026 23 Sep 2026 7 Oct 2026 25 Sep 2026 28 Sep 2026
Lower debt, £7m cash, a shorter lease book
At 31 March 2026 cash was £6.95m against gross debt of £12.99m, all secured on the Polish properties without recourse to the group. £3.95m of that is Blue Tower deferred consideration. The next £1.02m instalment fell due in August 2026, and payments run to August 2028. Adjusted net assets were 38.57p a share. The latest close, on 15 October 2026, was 16.0p.
Vacancy across the five properties was 10.6%. Letting it would add about €0.43m a year. Average remaining lease length fell to 3 years 11 months from 4 years 10 months. 25 Jun 2026 7 Oct 2026
Deals to buy, funds that expire
Management calls the outlook positive. Mr Habib says the group is seeing interesting deals, and has about £7m of cash and access to third-party capital from long-term clients. Half-year results are due on 24 November 2026.
The open questions are practical. Three funds expire in 2027 (Fprop UK Special Opportunities in January, Fprop Krakow in March, Fprop Gdynia-independent Fprop Gdansk-type fund FGC in December), holding about £47m of the £144m managed. The company has not said what replaces them. Annualised fee income was £1.30m at March 2026, against £1.40m a year earlier. Whether new deals refill the funds or only the company's own balance sheet is not yet known. The company has also not said what the three withdrawn AGM resolutions covered.
The company's own market view is cautious. It describes Poland as comparatively robust, with 3.5% GDP growth expected in 2026. For the UK it sees weak sentiment and little near-term capital growth. 25 Jun 2026 24 Sep 2026
“The economy and markets remain challenging, but we are identifying some interesting deals and taking the opportunity to buy them where possible.” 25 Jun 2026
Written by AI from First Property Group's own announcements since Oct 2023 · every paragraph links to its sources