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| Sobha may raise Rs 300 crore |
| Raghuvir Badrinath / Chennai/ Bangalore Jan 28, 2010, 00:43 IST |
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Sobha Developers, the Bangalore-based publicly-held real estate developer, is understood to be in discussions to raise Rs 300 crore at project levels.
If this step fructifies, this will be second major fund raising Sobha Developers will be embarking on after it raised Rs 225 crore during the second half of 2009 from a fund sponsored by Infosys co-founder N S Raghavan.
In addition to the SPV fund raising, Sobha Developers has also raised Rs 530 crore through the Qualified Institutional Placement route in 2009. Officials at Sobha declined to comment on the fund raising from HDFC stating they are in a silent period ahead of their quarterly results on January 29.
The company, which has a land bank of 3,000 acres, has been taking these concrete steps to reduce its leverage on debt and it has managed to bring down the ratio to 0.8 from a peak of 1.6 on a debt of close to Rs 1,900 crore. The debt is now at Rs 1,450 crore and the company intends to have the leverage at 0.7 by March 2010 and bring it down further to 0.5 by March 2011.
According to industry sources, Sobha is also close to selling two land parcels in Bangalore covering a total area of close to 44 acres which should fetch Rs 120 crore. In addition to this, the company is also hawking a land parcel of 103 acres in Pune which is expected to fetch Rs 250 crore.
Industry sources add that the latest round of fund raising will be used to launch a slew of projects which the company has lined up over the next 12-18 months. Sobha is expected to launch projects worth Rs 2,800 crore covering 8 million square feet. It is also understood that that the company is developing the concept of Sobha Value Homes and it will be launched in Bangalore and Coimbatore to start with. Of the 8 million sq ft of fresh development, Sobha is planning to start, 20-25 per cent will be allocated for value homes.
As of March 31, 2009, Sobha has completed 12.46 million sq ft residential/commercial in-house projects and 18.30 million sq ft of contractual projects. In addition to this, the company has over 30 projects aggregating 9.30 mn sq ft under construction in residential category and also 34 projects aggregating to 5.85 million sq ft under contracts from Infosys and other leading companies of India.
Sobha, riding the renewed retail interest in real estate, during December 2009 sold 100 units and the operations are cash flow positive, an aspect which was not there during the corresponding period of last year. It is also understood that the company is generating cash to repay loans without any hassles and they have been able to secure further line of credit to the tune of Rs 200 crore for various projects.
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