First Rock to rebalance geographic holdings
Published:Wednesday | June 30, 2021 | 12:10 AM
First Rock Capital Holdings, which focuses on real estate investments, wants to grow its assets by a third or more this year, a goal it sees as doable, given its pace of growth since listing on the stock market.
The start-up closed financial year 2019 with US$16 million in assets, then more than doubled that last year to around US$36 million.
“We intend to grow that to hit US$50 million in total assets by the end of the financial year,” CEO Ryan Reid told shareholders at their virtual annual general meeting on Tuesday. It’s a target the company initially expected to hit within five years of becoming a public company – it listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange in February 2020 – but executed a series of deals almost immediately after its market début, financed from the US$13 million of cash raised from its share float on the stock market and another J$2.5 billion capital raised shortly after on the private market.
Reid told the Financial Gleaner after the meeting that in order to achieve the revised goal, First Rock will continue its asset diversification strategy.
First Rock now holds 68 per cent of its total assets in Jamaica, 10 per cent in Cayman, 16 per cent in Costa Rica and six per cent in Florida, but is planning a geographic rebalancing of the portfolio this year.
“That move will see us realigning the allocations as presented, to be more equally weighted across jurisdictions,” he said.
The company plans to grow its Cayman Islands holdings by around 20 per cent, and is otherwise looking to the New York tri-state and the state of Georgia, “specifically the city of Atlanta”, for investment opportunities.
Jamaica, however, will remain the focal point of the portfolio.
“The fact that Jamaica is the largest portion won’t change, but this is a rebalancing of the portfolio. If 60-plus goes down to say 50 per cent, Jamaica will still be the largest,” Reid noted.