Macrotech Developers (Lodha) announced closure of their Rs 4,000 crore QIP (qualified institutional placement).
The book was oversubscribed more than 3 times within five hours of issue opening and witnessed traction from a diversified set of investors such as sovereign funds, pension funds, mutual funds, insurers, etc.
More than 90% of the book was allocated to marquee long-only global investors.
Existing shareholders of the company such as Capital Group, Ivanhoe Cambridge (CDPQ arm), Wellington, Nomura, Manulife, Nippon, Max Life enhanced their investment through this QIP.
The institutional placement also saw new investors like GIC, Oppenheimer, Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), Amundi, Tata Mutual Fund, etc. endorsing the growth potential of the housing industry and Lodha’s leadership position therein.
Using the proceeds, Lodha intends to grow in under-represented micro-markets of MMR and Pune in a capital-efficient manner. The company is also exploring plans to enter into the Bangalore market to cater to the needs of even better quality development in a city that is seeing significant creation of technology jobs and wealth creation.
The company plans to nearly double its pre-sales to Rs 14,000 crore by FY24 and further grow to Rs 20,000 crore by FY26.
Abhishek Lodha, MD, Macrotech Developers, said, “The significant demand from investors enabled us to launch and close the QIP within hours of opening the book – a tremendous feat for the Indian housing industry. We see that all the structural factors are in place for significant growth in volumes in housing, especially in the middle income and affordable segments, which is a focus area for us.”
With this fundraise, the company said it is well on course of achieving the dual target of deleveraging and capital-light expansion through the JDA (joint developer agreement) model.
“Our debt to equity now stands at 0.75x. The Lodha brand is seen as delivering the best development quality and services for customers and the best NPV for landowners. We are seeing a very robust pipeline of JDA deals and plan to invest nearly Rs 3,000 crores over the course of the next 6 quarters through these JDAs and add about Rs 40,000 crores worth of GDV to our portfolio,” added Lodha.