Revival for Madison after torrid 2006

THE unit price of Madison Property Fund Managers, the first property asset management company to list on the JSE — in June last year — has increased about 60% since it first listed.

There is speculation that the market is expecting strong maiden earnings from the company, which is due to shortly release results.

Madison, which asset manages listed property companies Redefine Income Fund, Hyprop Investments and ApexHi Properties, will be releasing maiden results for the year to December in the middle of next month and is expected to deliver substantially better earnings than it stated in its prospectus.

After Madison listed at R5 in June last year, the company had a torrid time, along with the rest of the listed property sector.

From May last year, the sector lost significant value following higher interest rates in the US.

Though the listed property sector initially recovered, it experienced another dip because of the first 50-basis-point hike in SA’s repo rate last year.

Since then the listed property sector has recovered.

At one stage last year Madison’s unit was trading at just under R4 but in the past month it has been trading in the R8 band.

Another factor which may have contributed to Madison’s recovery was the successful takeover bid for Spearhead Property Holdings by Re-define. At the end of last year, Redefine acquired Spearhead in a deal valued at R1,3bn.

Madison will earn fees from this transaction.

Business Day reported this month that Allan Gray Property Trust (Grayprop) was being courted by Madison.

Grayprop confirmed that Allan Gray — which is the owner of 76% of the management company of Grayprop — had been approached by a party with regard selling its controlling stake.

Madison has since confirmed that it is one of the interested parties.

If Madison is successful in its bid, it will most likely want to merge Grayprop’s retail assets with Hyprop’s portfolio.