Urban Exposure is set to make a second attempt to list on the London Stock Exchange following a failed attempt in 2014.
The specialist residential development finance and asset manager said it plans to raise £150m (€170.6m) by issuing shares at £1 each in an initial public offering (IPO) as it joins London’s junior investment market AIM on 9 May.
In August 2014, Urban Exposure Group dropped its £500m fundraising plan to list its closed-end real estate arm as it blamed the “prevailing IPO backdrop”.
Urban Exposure’s CEO Randeesh Sandhu told IPE Real Assets today that two main things have changed since the company attempted to float in 2014.
Sandhu said there has been a change in offer and model.
In 2014, Urban Exposure planned to float a closed-ended investment company - a debt fund, Sandhu said, whereas this time ”the plan is to float the company to scale up asset management activities on behalf of third parties and expand and increase its own balance sheet lending activity.”
Also, Urban Exposure’s focus is now more widely spread across the UK than in 2014, Sandhu said.
For instance, Urban Exposure has a pipeline of lending opportunities that are geographically diverse– spread across the UK from the North and Midlands to the South and Greater London, he said.
This is evident in recent deals like the financing of developments in Manchester, Birmingham and Welwyn Garden City, Sandhu said.
Urban Exposure said the IPO has attracted strong support from high-quality institutional investors.
Urban Exposure said it intends to use the net proceeds of the placing to lend to UK residential Small and medium-sized enterprises developers from the company’s balance sheet and seed and expand asset management activities.
On admission to trading on AIM, the company will have a market capitalisation of £165m.
William McKee, chairman of Urban Exposure, said: “Urban Exposure offers investors a unique and attractive way to gain exposure to the high margin structural growth opportunity within the UK residential development finance sector.”
The Urban Exposure team has the experience and capabilities as both a lender and asset manager of third-party funds to capitalise on the reduction in traditional bank lending to the sector since the global financial crisis, McKee said.
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