BC Partners Agrees €104m Investment in French Serviced Apartment Group Edgar Suites
Main Photo: The Urban Suites, Grands Boulevards – Hauteville in Paris
Date: June 2021
Location: 19 cities across France
Name: Edgar Suites
No. of Keys: TBA
Owner: Edgar Suites who, five years ago, reinvented the concept of hotel residences located in town centres, by creating a new offer, called Urban Suites. The company was founded by Xavier O’Quin, Maxime Benoit and Grégoire Benoit.
Funder: Investor BC Partners has agreed a €104m investment in French serviced apartment group Edgar Suites. The backing will allow Edgar to substantially increase its portfolio over the next five years.
Launched in 2016, Edgar specialises in creating apartments by converting office buildings. The group currently has 19 sites open across French cities.
The Urban Suites at Edgar Suites are spacious, fitted with top-of-the-range kitchens and quality amenities, and tasteful decor. The customer experience is at the heart of Edgar Suites’ strategy, as evidenced by the excellent ratings received on booking platforms (9.2/10 on average).
Another key asset of Edgar Suites is it’s personalised digital concierge services, which are internalised and provide a responsive, professional and state-of-the-art customer interface.
The company, which already operates Urban Suites at 18 addresses in Paris and Bordeaux, expects nearly 5,000 sqm of projects to be delivered in the next 12 months. The ambition is to create the French benchmark for Urban Suites, by participating in the necessary regeneration of commercial real estate assets that have become obsolete.
This growth will involve the development of 25,000 sqm of additional Urban Suites in France by 2026.
Xavier O’Quin, president of Edgar Suites, takes pride of the resilience of the company during this period of health crisis – the group had an average occupancy rate of 84% in 2020.
“BC Partners is the preferred investing partner to propel our growth Edgar Suites aims to operate the residences through leasing from third-party owners and now for it’s own account after acquisition of the walls. With this substantial fundraising, led by Chausson Finance, Edgar Suites is entering the next phase of its growth”, underlines O’Quin.
“I am truly satisfied with our partnership with BC Partners which is without a doubt the most qualified investor partner to accelerate our growth. Our goal ? To become a true national champion on this Urban Suites segment.”
“Through this acquisition, we wish to support Edgar Suites and its managers in their next phase of growth and thus contribute to the emergence of a new class of institutional assets, which will meet the demand for new uses in the hospitality industry and its necessary regulation, alongside local authorities”, stated Thibault Lauprêtre, BC Partners Real Estate Managing Director.
In five years, Edgar Suites has seen its number of suites under management increase from 10 to 150 in Paris and the inner suburbs. The company plans to operate 700 suites in 2026, expanding its activity to the main regional capitals of France. The multiple optimizations throughout the value chain – from the identification of projects for new residences to the day-to-day management of the sites – enable to offer an attractive ROI for owners and developers.
THPT Comment: Paris, alongside London, has been at the vanguard of development of serviced apartments dating back to the 1990s. Well to Edgar Suites for doing their bit in this last decade.
First Seen: Edgar Suites press release
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