Real estate group British Land Company has raised its annual earnings guidance recently as a scramble for office space by artificial intelligence (AI) and technology companies, including Anthropic, have driven double-digit rental growth across its London campuses.
London is emerging as a leading technology hub, amid firms like OpenAI establishing bases in the city, helping offset weaker demand from traditional businesses that have scaled back office space as hybrid work is in place.
British Land mentions it has signed Claude creator Anthropic for 158,000 sq ft – the equivalent of almost two soccer fields – at its Regent’s Place campus, emerging as its sixth deal with the AI developer. Drugmaker Gilead Sciences is another pharmaceutical and tech firm at the Regent’s Place campus.
British Land’s Chief Executive Simon Carter, who plans to step down this year, comments the company was seeing ‘accelerating demand from a new wave of AI and innovation-led occupiers’ amid a supply-constrained market. The company’s increased by 2% at 07.13 GMT.
British Land, which operates the Broadgate, Regent’s Place and Paddington Central office campuses, commented that occupancy increased to 95% at the end of March from 92% at the end of September with most remaining vacancy located in newly delivered space, where demand is greatest.
AI tenant demand has helped campus rental growth increase to 12% on a like-for-like basis for the year ended March, lifting overall like-for-like net rental growth to 6%.
By contrast, like-for-like net rental growth at its retail and London urban logistics lowered to 2% from 5% growth seen last year, as demand normalised and retail parks approached full occupancy.
British Land commented that underlying earnings would reach 28.9 pence per share for fiscal 2026 in contrast to prior guidance of 28.5.
The company also raised its guidance for next fiscal year’s earnings to at least 30.5 pence per share from 30.2 pence, assisted by the completion of its Life Science REIT acquisition.
