NTR to Outline Cash Event for Investors in 2010
Sunday Business Post : January 03 2010
By Samantha McCaughren, Business Correspondent
Renewable energy company NTR is to outline to shareholders how and when they will be able to turn their investment in the company into cash. Speaking to The Sunday Business Post, chief executive Jim Barry said shareholders were suffering from the lack of liquidity in the stock. Barry said that details on future liquidity options for investors would be given this year. NTR currently trades on the grey market. ‘‘There’s no question in my mind that there are people who, for their own reasons, would like to get out of our stock but there isn’t the depth of liquidity in the stock to let them get out,” Barry said. ‘‘That creates a selling weight on our stock. ‘‘We have to give our shareholders this year a view on future liquidity with the view that it gives people a reason to buy the stock. ” So we’re not going to have to rely on this grey market indefinitely. People won’t buy in unless they have clarity on how they are going to get out at some point.”
Barry hinted that the holding company of solar subsidiary SES could see a new investor coming on board early this year. The two main SES businesses need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars this year. ‘‘If someone said can we put some money in, along side you, into the SES/Tessera holding company in quarter one, if we thought we could prove something by doing it. . . and it would help underpin the two core funding processes on SES, that is something we might consider,” he said. ‘‘We’re talking to people all the time, if the right kind of partner came along we might. That is not something I would call core. That is something we would do opportunistically,” he said.
Barry is strongly interested in the possibility of listing a subsidiary. ‘‘If we raise money for SES this year we could easily list SES within a year or two of that if it’s successful. ‘‘We could demerge one of our subsidiaries if it was a listed subsidiary, demerge that to our shareholders and give them a chunk of a share in a listed company,” he added. Barry said that listing NTR was still a possibility. ‘‘It’s a valid option and it’s one we won’t dismiss lightly. ‘‘We’ve a lot of flexibility of movement as a non-listed company. But at the same time, listing gives you more ready access to capital. More importantly it gives our shareholders liquidity and there is no question this year our shareholders have suffered from a lack of liquidity.”
Shares in NTR tend not to trade in any great volume. The last traded price was €2.50 per share, which gave the group a market capitalisation of €504 million. In the last 12 months it has traded as high as €3.30 and reached a low of €1.25. In the year to March 2009, it paid a dividend of 4.9c per share.