We published a podcast with Robert Ware and Preston Rabl, Chief Executive and Corporate Director of the Conygar Investment Company (LON:CIC) on Monday after the announcement of their recent interim results. Here follows a transcript of the interim results update.
Conygar is an AIM listed property company focused on both opportunistic deal making and development of its large Welsh Marina and land bank projects. The company is currently trading on a discount to last reported NAV of over 30%. For more detail on the company's acquisition history and investment philosophy click here.
You announced your interim results this week and the year has started with another major land bank acquisition, Haverfordwest, and a big share buy-back campaign. Could you briefly run us through the key highlights?
RW: Thank you. I think the highlights that come out of our first six months are steady as she goes. We had a 3% increase in the NAV, from 150 pence up to 154 pence, and profit before tax was £3.4 million; albeit less than the prior six months, if you actually take out the prior six months trading profits, then we’re talking about a comparison of £1.1m to £3.4m. That reflects significant cost reductions through cost cutting (from our takeover of the Advantage Property Income Trust) and we re-couponed our interest rate swaps; we effectively brought down the cost of our debt from about 6% down to 3.4% on average. The full impact of that will come through in the second half and obviously going forward.
I think the other highlight to really focus on is our cash and our undrawn but committed facilities so that we’ve got nearly £100 million for future acquisitions. As you rightly said, we’ve purchased 86 acres of land at Haverfordwest. This has got outline planning permission. The in-price costs for the 900 units worked out at about £15,000 per unit and we anticipate a significant uplift to come through this as and when the house builders come back and require our land.
And the share buy-back, we’ve actually in the last 48 hours bought over 2 million more shares back in, so we’ve got over 10% of the share capital that we’ve bought back and we’ve paid, on average, just under 116 pence per share. The basis of the buy-back is really to take advantage of…
