By Michael Susin

Land Securities Group PLC on Tuesday reported a swing to pretax profit for the first half of the fiscal year and increased its dividend payout.

The commercial-property developer and investment company made a pretax profit of 275 million pounds ($368.9 million) for the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with a loss of GBP835 million a year earlier.

Revenue decreased to GBP315 million from GBP327 million. The value of the company's combined portfolio rose to GBP11 billion from GBP10.8 billion.

The company's net tangible asset value per share stood at 1,012 pence as of Sept. 30 compared with 985 pence at the same date last year. Office-like portfolio vacancy rates stood at 4.4% compared with 3.1% at March driven mostly by vacant space at Dashwood. The company expects the vacancy rate to fall by March as it begins to let the space available.

"Our outlets portfolio saw like-for-like sales increase 7.9% versus 2019 for the 25 weeks after April 12 with values up 1.0% over the six months as a result. Shopping center sales also benefited from the strong post-pandemic recovery with brand partner sales now within approximately 3% of 2019 levels for this same period," the company said.

Land Securities declared a dividend of 15.5 pence a share for the six-month period, down from 12.0 pence a year earlier.

Write to Michael Susin at michael.susin@wsj.com