St Laurence to Join Unlisted

St Laurence to Join Unlisted

St Laurence Property & Finance Limited announced today that, from 1 September its convertible Property Notes will be tradable on Unlisted, the established Internet-based trading facility.

“We have decided to join Unlisted as an interim step to listing the Property Notes on the NZX at some point in the future,” St Laurence Property & Finance Limited’s chief executive John Mallon said.

Currently St Laurence is running a secondary market for the 80,267,000 convertible Property Notes on issue and recent trades have been at $0.95 per note. The current market capitalisation at $0.95 per Note is $76.3m. The Notes have a Net Asset Backing of 98.7 cents as at 31 March 2004, projected to increase to $1.03 over the current financial year.

The Notes will convert into St Laurence Property & Finance shares on a one-to-one basis on 1 December 2008.

“While the existing secondary market has provided improved liquidity for our investors, Unlisted provides a cost-effective way for our note holders to trade their Notes through an established market and also provides a transparent assessment of market value.”

Other companies whose shares or securities are traded on Unlisted include Active Equities, New Zealand Rural Property Trust, King Country Energy and Skyline.

St Laurence Property & Finance was established in April 2000 and provides a range of property related financial services including lending services, property investment, underwriting services and securities investment. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of St Laurence Holdings Limited.

St Laurence Property & Finance produced an annual profit of $3.82 million for the year ended 31 March 2004 and is forecasting a profit of $8.5 million for the current financial year.

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