Home REIT hopes for ‘powerful message’ with maiden results
The team behind Home REIT claims to have delivered “a powerful message” to the public markets with the company’s first set of financial results today.
“You can deliver secure, solid income for investors but you can make a genuine difference on the ground with genuine social impact,” said Jamie Beale (pictured, left, with Gareth Jones), partner at the REIT’s investment adviser, Alvarium Home REIT Advisors. “There is no reason why the investment world can’t be moving further in that direction.”
Home REIT raised £241m in an initial public offering last October. The company buys and builds properties to alleviate homelessness in the UK. Since the float it has put together a portfolio of 572 properties valued at £243m, and over the period to 28 February posted a profit of £11.4m and a total NAV return of 4.9%.
The team behind Home REIT claims to have delivered “a powerful message” to the public markets with the company’s first set of financial results today.
“You can deliver secure, solid income for investors but you can make a genuine difference on the ground with genuine social impact,” said Jamie Beale (pictured, left, with Gareth Jones), partner at the REIT’s investment adviser, Alvarium Home REIT Advisors. “There is no reason why the investment world can’t be moving further in that direction.”
Home REIT raised £241m in an initial public offering last October. The company buys and builds properties to alleviate homelessness in the UK. Since the float it has put together a portfolio of 572 properties valued at £243m, and over the period to 28 February posted a profit of £11.4m and a total NAV return of 4.9%.
For Beale, the progress made in the months since the IPO has proved the team’s confidence that private capital can be used for public good.
Home REIT now has more than 3,000 beds available across its portfolio, leased to charities, housing associations and community interest companies that in turn receive funding from local or central government. Beale and the team stress the urgency of creating new asset supply to meet the “significant and growing demand for homeless accommodation” during the pandemic.
“It ranges from rough sleeping to those without suitable accommodation caused by a plethora of factors such as drug and alcohol abuse, people leaving prison and the armed services with no home to go to, eviction by private landlord, relationship breakdowns, domestic abuse and violence and mental health issues,” he said.
Now the team is preparing for its next stage of expansion. It had deployed the money raised through its listing within five months of the IPO – ahead of schedule – and has £120m in debt from Scottish Widows ready for further deals. Analysts covering the company’s stock at Liberum said they “expect another capital raise from the company relatively shortly”.
“We’re on track with our initial expectations,” said Gareth Jones, chief financial officer at the investment adviser. “We have debt to deploy responsibly. We never hid our ambitions at the time of IPO that we want to grow this trust to £1bn over the next three years. We’re on track with that.”
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