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Johannesburg - Is Greek real estate personality Niki Vontas, CEO of JSE-listed Bonatla Property Holdings [JSE:BNT], getting out of bricks and mortar?
Bonatla, which hit the headlines last year as a potential buyer of the beleaguered Sharemax portfolio, issued a rather curious announcement earlier this month saying it’s entering the charcoal and activated carbon markets.
The company has just bought shares in a manufacturing plant in Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal, for R29.5m – which seems to signal a clear move away from Bonatla’s commercial property interests.
“Not so,” says Vontas. “Bonatla remains a property-focused company with plans to aggressively bulk up its commercial real estate business over the next two years.”
Vontas says it already has a pipeline of potential acquisitions lined up that could take Bonatla’s existing property portfolio - worth around R400m - to R1.5bn before year-end.
In fact, Vontas is still keen to get his hands on more than 30 properties owned by the collapsed Sharemax syndication scheme, which is roughly valued around R2.6bn.
That excludes Sharemax’s two largest shopping centre syndications – Pretoria’s Zambezi Retail Park and the unfinished The Villa.
“I walked away from both those centres because there was no way to make them work unless you have very deep pockets.”
The Sharemax portfolio includes (among others) the Flora Centre (West Rand), Rivonia Square (Johannesburg), Waterglen Shopping Centre and Silverwater Crossing (Pretoria) and The Village (Nelspruit).
Vontas says he doesn’t want to make too much noise about the rest of Sharemax’s portfolio but would like to pursue a potential acquisition once the law firm appointed by the SA Reserve Bank as Sharemax’s statutory manager completes its evaluation of the company.
He expects the latter to be finalised within a month.
No doubt Vontas would want to ensure not to make the same mistake as that of Old Mutual-managed SA Corporate Real Estate Fund, which has been severely punished by the market ever since it paid Sharemax what was believed to be a highly inflated R1bn for a poorly-performing shopping centre portfolio five years ago (through its former sister fund, SA Retail).
Vontas has had his fair share of controversy over recent years, raising the ire of the JSE on more than one occasion due to corporate reporting issues – which again recently resulted in a temporary suspension of trade in Bonatla’s shares.
Meanwhile, he believes the company’s foray into activated carbon manufacturing will create huge value for Bonatla shareholders.
The land and building in Estcourt housing the manufacturing plant was bought purely as an income-generating property asset by Bonatla in 2007.
The recent decision to pump money into reactivating the plant as a carbon manufacturing business was, Vontas says, prompted by the fact activated carbon – widely used to purify water – has become a highly sought-after commodity worldwide.
The business is apparently the only one of its kind in Africa.
* This article was first published in Finweek.
* To read more Finweek articles, click here.
Bonatla, which hit the headlines last year as a potential buyer of the beleaguered Sharemax portfolio, issued a rather curious announcement earlier this month saying it’s entering the charcoal and activated carbon markets.
The company has just bought shares in a manufacturing plant in Estcourt, KwaZulu-Natal, for R29.5m – which seems to signal a clear move away from Bonatla’s commercial property interests.
“Not so,” says Vontas. “Bonatla remains a property-focused company with plans to aggressively bulk up its commercial real estate business over the next two years.”
Vontas says it already has a pipeline of potential acquisitions lined up that could take Bonatla’s existing property portfolio - worth around R400m - to R1.5bn before year-end.
In fact, Vontas is still keen to get his hands on more than 30 properties owned by the collapsed Sharemax syndication scheme, which is roughly valued around R2.6bn.
That excludes Sharemax’s two largest shopping centre syndications – Pretoria’s Zambezi Retail Park and the unfinished The Villa.
“I walked away from both those centres because there was no way to make them work unless you have very deep pockets.”
The Sharemax portfolio includes (among others) the Flora Centre (West Rand), Rivonia Square (Johannesburg), Waterglen Shopping Centre and Silverwater Crossing (Pretoria) and The Village (Nelspruit).
Vontas says he doesn’t want to make too much noise about the rest of Sharemax’s portfolio but would like to pursue a potential acquisition once the law firm appointed by the SA Reserve Bank as Sharemax’s statutory manager completes its evaluation of the company.
He expects the latter to be finalised within a month.
No doubt Vontas would want to ensure not to make the same mistake as that of Old Mutual-managed SA Corporate Real Estate Fund, which has been severely punished by the market ever since it paid Sharemax what was believed to be a highly inflated R1bn for a poorly-performing shopping centre portfolio five years ago (through its former sister fund, SA Retail).
Vontas has had his fair share of controversy over recent years, raising the ire of the JSE on more than one occasion due to corporate reporting issues – which again recently resulted in a temporary suspension of trade in Bonatla’s shares.
Meanwhile, he believes the company’s foray into activated carbon manufacturing will create huge value for Bonatla shareholders.
The land and building in Estcourt housing the manufacturing plant was bought purely as an income-generating property asset by Bonatla in 2007.
The recent decision to pump money into reactivating the plant as a carbon manufacturing business was, Vontas says, prompted by the fact activated carbon – widely used to purify water – has become a highly sought-after commodity worldwide.
The business is apparently the only one of its kind in Africa.
* This article was first published in Finweek.
* To read more Finweek articles, click here.
