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Yew Grove Reit, a new Irish real-estate investment trust (reit), has raised € 75 million in an initial public offering (IPO), three-quarters of what it had set out to achieve.
However, the directors of the trust estimate that they can build a property portfolio of between € 300 million and € 500 million over the next few years, Yew Grove said in a statement on Monday. Admission for trading on the junior Dublin and London stock markets is expected to occur on Friday.
The founding managers of the funds – Jonathan Laredo, Michael Gibbons and Charles Peach – are all executives of UK-based Peak Capital Partners, which set up a fund, Yew Tree Investments, to buy Irish property in the wake of the property crash.
Yew Grove will an initial portfolio of 10 such properties – mainly office and industrial assets let to State entities, IDA-supported companies and large corporates – that had been assembled by the management team and valued at € 25.9 million.
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The company will focus on investing the new money on properties in Dublin city and as far as a 30-minute commute of the M50 motorway, other major regional towns and cities, and IDA business and technology parks, it said.
“The IPO is a compelling opportunity for our customers, investors and the sector,” said Mr Laredo. “It will position the company to invest in strategic centres throughout Ireland and help Irish state bodies, IDA Ireland and other [foreign-direct investment] companies and larger corporate tenants to find the property solution to meet their needs.”
The directors have set a target of a dividend of 7c per share for the company’s first full financial year, in 2019. That equates to a dividend yield of 7 per cent, based off the company’s IPO price of € 1 per share.
Yew Grove will be the fourth reit to float in Dublin since the enactment in 2013 of legislation for such trusts.
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