MoneyMasters heading to equity market for double dip

Financial services company MoneyMasters Limited is readying one of its companies, MoneyMasters Securities Limited, MMS, for listing on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, and expects to float the shares to market investors by the end of the year.

The MMS listing is targeted at the JSE’s junior market, which limits the size of the funds it can raise.

But MoneyMasters also intends to pursue another IPO for a real estate business in which it holds partial interest, MoneyMasters Real Estate Infrastructure and Investment Trust, or MMREIT, which is aiming to go public via the senior or main market early next year.

MoneyMasters Group CEO Claudette Crooks says MMS will be seeking the maximum amount possible from the junior market IPO, but is hoping that there will soon be movement on the anticipated increase in the cap on share capital from the current $500 million to the expected $750 million.

Crooks argues that, technically, the cap is already at that level, basing her point on movements in the value of the local currency over time.

“Ideally, we wish the stock exchange would have lifted the limit on the junior market. When they had the $500-million limit, the rate of exchange was at a different level,” Crooks said.

When the junior stock market launched in 2009, the JMD was trading at around $90 per US dollar. Today, the exchange rate is at around $154.

Still, notwithstanding the cap on fundraising, Crooks says she is mindful that the 10 years of tax breaks offered as incentives to junior companies, which are classified as SMEs, gives them a needed edge; it allows them room to sprout in much the same way as ventures that are part of an incubatory arrangement, she noted.

MoneyMasters Securities is awaiting the final nod from the Financial Services Commission to present its prospectus to the investing public, but expects to have the regulator’s approval in hand to make the offer by year end.

Its one of five members of the MoneyMasters Group, with about $5 billion, or US$32 million, in assets under management, on and off-balance sheet, Crooks said.

The others are MMREIT, MoneyMasters Money Services, which includes a cambio, MoneyMasters Real Estate Holdings, and MoneyMasters Investments, a holding company.

The group was restructured in 2019, with MMREIT being incorporated in June 2021. The REIT is owned by a group of investors, with MoneyMasters holding a 21 per cent stake.

Crooks said about $430 million was raised privately for MMREIT, in addition to another $600 million-plus in preference shares, and that the entity now has a capital base of about $1.2 billion.

“We have a commitment to list that entity separately, and, because of its size, it will be listed on the main market of the JSE,” she said.

Regarding the growth of the overall group, Crooks says revenue is now at US$32 million and that the intention is to grow the top line by about US$10 million to US$20 million, annually, in order to achieve 30 per cent growth, on average, at the bottom line.

MoneyMasters Group normally has about 18 projects being funded at any one time, with the bulk of the company’s structured financing deals done off-balance sheet, where developers and investors are brought together.

“We try to at least roll out about $800 million in projects per month, and a lot of them are ones that we sell participation to other institutional investors and pension funds,” Crooks said

The company is eyeing expansion to the Caribbean, saying there is scope for business in St Lucia, Guyana and St Kitts-Nevis that need to be explored. MoneyMasters is already in preliminary talks with prospective partners in St Lucia and St Kitts, she said.

“I believe there are commonalities across the Caribbean, and I also believe there are opportunities for significant flows in terms of investment funds from the diaspora out of Canada and the USA into Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean,” she added.

neville.graham@gleanerjm.com