Stephen Wicks and Nishith Malde were the duo behind the highly successful residential and commercial property developer Country & Metropolitan. They have now returned to market with AIM entrant Inland, which specialises in buying ‘brown field’ sites and enhancing value by obtaining planning permissions for residential and mixed-use development.
Stephen Wicks and Nishith Malde were the duo behind the highly successful residential and commercial property developer Country & Metropolitan. They have now returned to market with AIM entrant Inland, which specialises in buying ‘brown field’ sites and enhancing value by obtaining planning permissions for residential and mixed-use development.
Country & Metropolitan was founded by Wicks in 1990. It floated as a fully listed entity in 1999 at 68p with a £6.9 million valuation and was taken over in 2005 for £72 million, or 300p a share.
Wicks informed says he had no trouble raising £50 million for Inland at 50p from hungry institutions ahead of its recent debut. ‘We raised £50 million’, he explained, ‘although we had £80 million on the table so everybody was scaled back and we have a further £50 million facility with RBOS.’
Since its formation in 2005, Inland has already demonstrated its ability to generate handsome returns (on both equity and capital employed) and also owns or controls more than 700 potential building plots.
In addition, Inland has an interest in private house builder Howarth among other investments. Institutional and other backers clearly hanker after this investment tale (during 2006, Wicks managed to prise £11.24 million from backers through a private placing at 35p, in order to fund the development of operations), and demand for residential development sites remains strong.
Furthermore, competition for sites with planning permission has reached fever pitch, as evidenced by the recent spate of takeovers among quoted house builders, spurred by their need to boost land banks.
Wicks says: ‘This is all about contacts we have with the big land vendors, and we’re looking to build a large land bank company which will be taken over by one of the house builders in due course.’
The market has warmed to the news, marking the shares higher to 55.5p.
