Johannesburg - Global Trade Centre (GTC), the property developer and manager listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, yesterday became the first Polish inward listed firm to join the main board of the JSE.
As at end-December, GTC’s property portfolio was valued at e1.3 billion (R19.6bn) and comprised 25 prime commercial properties, including 20 office and five retail properties with a combined rentable area of about 524 000m², two office projects and a retail project under construction, and four further projects in the planning stage.
The company operates in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria, holds land in the Ukraine and Russia and operates in the Czech Republic through associates and joint ventures.
Thomas Kurzmann, the chief executive of GTC, said yesterday that the JSE listing was an exciting step in enabling the company to achieve its strategy to significantly increase the value of the portfolio to more than e2bn within 36 months through value-enhancing acquisitions, development activities and asset value improvements.
“Although we are not raising capital from South African investors on this occasion, we believe this inward listing will increase the liquidity and tradability of our shares while increasing awareness of our current activities and future strategic initiatives among a new group of institutional investors,” he said.
Kurzmann said as the first Polish company listed on the JSE, GTC’s balanced portfolio of e1.3bn offered an attractive “total return” proposition to South African investors in high quality assets in Poland and central, eastern and south-east Europe, with upward economic potential and a unique, secured development pipeline with significant embedded net asset value growth potential.
GTC raised e140m through a rights issue in the third quarter of last year. Kurzmann said GTC listed on the JSE because of the keen interest, including from South African companies, for GTC to co-operate with them or to sell assets to them.
Kurzmann said in the medium term GTC might undertake a further capital raising in Poland and South Africa.
He said GTC invested all the e140m raised last year into acquisitions and, because of the zero interest rate in Euros, step-by-step refinanced these acquisitions with between 50 percent and 70 percent leverage.
Kurzmann said in this year’s third quarter GTC had about e60m to e70m from the capital raising available and would use the equity and the available cash for further acquisitions.
He added that the liquidity in GTC’s shares was a function of the price and investors were “looking at GTC as a growth story and unless they were looking to sell would hold on to GTC’s shares”. But Kurzmann said GTC had a free float of 39 percent, which was equivalent to about 150m GTC shares.
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