BSE’s new listing, New Africa Properties (NAP), is not only a property outfit with the largest market capitalisation on the local bourse, but it has also left authorities mulling a property index that will make the exchange at par with international peers.
NAP is the biggest property company on the exchange with a P1.2 billion market cap and the Mynhardt family, who started the fund, are bullish it will help the local market with the much needed liquidity.
Head of Product Development at the BSE, Thapelo Tsheole, praised the listing saying it comes at a time when there is hunger for investment vehicles in the market, adding that it creates room to allow free float to the market in the future.
“It (the listing) comes at a good time when the appetite was high,” said Tsheole, who helped the bourse list the highly rated, Nedbank Capital’s BettaBeta ETF and NewGold ETF.
“It creates opportunities on the BSE and it gives us the chance to create a property index,” he added.
New Africa Properties makes it five the number of property listed companies that include Turnstar, Prime Time, Letlole La Rona and RDC Properties.
New African Properties Chairman, John Mynhardt, is bullish the listing of the fund will boost liquidity on the BSE.
NAP listing comes at a time when the performance of the other 4 stocks has been lacklustre with on a year-to-date basis only 10 million property shares worth P17 million being traded, which is a small percentage of the P660 million overall value of shares traded.
But the fund will have to compete for attention with the other 22 listed companies that make the BSE’s Domestic Company Index (DCI).
“It is a very proud moment for me to be here and I am well aware of lack of liquidity in the market,” Mynhardt said.
Stating his company’s road to listing, Mynhardt said they started road shows two months ago to ‘test the market’ and admitted there were frustrations as they could not feel the allotment of spaces and the BSE tough listing requirements.
“We nearly pulled the plug because we were asking ourselves what chance we had if we could not fill the private placement, but we were surprised at the last minute of the IPO—Initial Public Offering,” related the Chairman.
However, he said his team kept the midnight oil burning to comply with BSE regulations and make the listing of the company, which has been around for 50 years, a success.
New Africa Properties is listed vehicle for a portfolio of properties made up of Cash Bazaar Holdings assets, which are sprawled between Botswana and Namibia.
The properties in NAP care include Riverwalk Mall, Kagiso Centre, Mafenyatlala Mall, Gallo Mall, Makoro Mall in Maun and Station Shopping Complex.
They have 440 leases over the 65 properties in question and the bulk of them is made up of some of the Cash Bazaar Holdings subsidiaries, such as CB Stores, Topline, Sole Shoes, Taku Taku, Furnmart and Home Corp.
The portfolio is heavily skewed towards the shopping centers but supported by office space and warehouses.
Despite Chairman bashing the BSE delays in listing the fund, Managing Director of Cash Bazaar Holdings, Tobias Mynhardt said the stock exchange’s environment that made ‘us list is fairly enabling’.
“We promise to create liquidity in the BSE,” Tobias Mynhardt said, adding the demand was huge during the IPO that was mainly driven by the Chairman’s and Furnmart track record.
At the beginning of trading on BSE, the stock was bid at P2.00 and offered at P2.20.
