Life Science REIT has raised £350m in its launch on the London Stock Exchange.
The firm, which had hoped to raise around £300m, said that it had been oversubscribed for the share placing over and above the £350m and had to undertake a scaling back exercise.
Life sciences has become an increasingly popular investment class since the pandemic and the increasing government backing of the sector.
Simon Farnsworth, managing director of Ironstone Asset Management, which acts as investment adviser to Life Science REIT, said: “This is the largest London-listed UK REIT IPO since 2016, with its success underlining the significant opportunity we have identified in the UK life science property sector, which is not currently represented by a specialist business on the public markets.
“We will now act swiftly to advance the pipeline of income-producing opportunities and exciting development opportunities currently under exclusivity or in advanced negotiations. We look forward to updating the market in due course.”
The new REIT will start trading on the London Stock Exchange at 8am on 19 November under the ticker LABS.
Plans for the new REIT were announced in October. At that time the group said it had a pipeline of £445m of opportunities, £305m of which it has exclusively. Of that, £220m are income producing assets providing an initial yield of 5%, with strong reversionary potential and average rents of £29 per sq ft, while around £85m will be forward funding and development opportunities.
The REIT will focus on assets in the golden triangle of Cambridge, London and Oxford.
Life Science REIT is targeting a NAV total return of more than 10% pa and aiming for a 4% dividend yield in its first year, which it hopes will grow to 5%.
It is chaired by Claire Boyle and has Savills’ global capital markets chair Simon Hope as vice-chair.
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