In QuotedData’s morning briefing 25 March 2021:
- Tufton Oceanic Assets (SHIP) raised gross proceeds of US$14.7m by issuing 15m shares at 98 cents each. [It said that it was after $25m, so perhaps this was a little disappointing. That’s a surprise to us as shipping rates have been soaring.]
- The Renewables Infrastructure Group (TRIG) raised about £240m from its share issue. It will issue 195m shares at 123p and use the money to reduce its debt.
- LondonMetric (LMP) has priced a £380m private debt placement with a number of institutional investors in North America and the UK. The placement was upsized from an initial £150m due to demand. The debt has a blended maturity of 11.1 years (range 7 – 15 years) and a weighted average coupon of 2.27% (range 2.06% to 2.43%). £50m of the 15-year notes have been designated as ‘Green notes’ these have to be secured against buildings which have high sustainability standards. This is the first time a UK REIT has issued these. The debt is a little bit (2 basis points or 0.02%) cheaper than non-green debt. The money will be used to replace existing debt facilities. [The concept of green notes is interesting but the interest saving is not that material. We wonder how much additional effort went into securing green finance. We will look out to see if there are more of these deals announced.]
- BBGI Infrastructure’s results for 2020 show a 1.2% uplift in NAV and a 7.18 pence dividend (on target) covered by cash earnings 1.27 times. This year’s dividend is targeted as 7.33p and 2022’s 7.48p. There was no real knock-on from COVID-19 on the portfolio. £59.2m was invested in six new and follow-on acquisitions in lower-risk availability-based healthcare, as well as road and bridge investments. This was funded by a £55m fund raise – the company has net cash of £20.5m.
- Utilico Emerging Markets (UEM) is scrapping its performance fee but the base management fee will be upped from 0.65% to: 1% on the first £500m, 0.9% on the next £250m, 0.85% on the next £250m and 0.75% on anything above £1bn. The new fees kick in from 1 April 2021.
- JPMorgan US Smaller Companies (JUSC)’s results for 2020 show it matching its benchmark with a return of 16.0%. The dividend was maintained at 2.5p. A weak dollar took about 3.9% off sterling returns. Pool Corp (wholesale distributor of swimming pool supplies and equipment) was the largest contributor for the year but Catalent (the vaccine manufacturer in the news for the alleged stockpile in Italy) was also a strong performer.
We also have news of a new investment by Apax, an update from NextEnergy Solar and results from International Public Partnerships, Regional REIT and Schroder Asia Total Return