Hipgnosis Songs Fund to raise over £250m
By Mary McDougall, Investors Chronicle, 22 September 2020
Hipgnosis Songs Fund (SONG), which invests mainly in music royalties, has unveiled another share placing to raise over £250 million from institutional and private investors as the investment trust continues its rapid expansion.
The shares are being issued at 116p – a 7.9 per cent discount to the share price at time of issue. The trust hopes to raise £250m from institutional investors, with a further £4m of shares available via a retail offer. Hipgnosis says it will invest the proceeds in a “significant pipeline of catalogues” which include some of the most influential hit songs of the past six decades.
The trust, which launched in 2018 and now has net assets over £700m, is designed to capitalise on the changing way we consume music. The managers pay a lump sum to artists for song rights and aim to maximise revenue potential through streaming rights and by placing the song in films and TV shows…
James Carthew head of investment company research at QuotedData, says “it would be fair to say that there was some scepticism about the concept of the fund when it was launched, especially given that Hipgnosis was shy about saying what they were paying for these catalogues, but, as successive results have demonstrated the success of the fund to date, even shrugging off the fall in income from live music, nerves have settled.”
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