Rams billion Pula property company enlists on BSE

  • Becomes fifth property portfolio to list on local bourse
  • FAR Properties latching onto continental retail boom – Ram

VINCENT MATUMO

The FAR Property Company is the latest property entrant to the Botswana Stock exchange Main board, joining other big players in the property space. Choppies Chief Executive Officer, Ramachandran Ottaphathu says the FAR Property Company Limited will be listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange on or before 6 May this year. FAR Properties, with a market capitalization of P977 million will list at a price of P2,57 per share.
The Company, which has 178 properties spattered around Botswana and South Africa and is owned by Ottaphathu and Choppies Director Farouk Ismail, will join the league of the Big Four property portfolio holders, becoming the fifth property company with a significant portfolio to list on the local bourse.Other companies include: Letlole La Rona which owns Cresta President Hotel, Primetime Property Holdings Limited, RDC Properties Limited and Turnstar Property Holdings Limited.
Ottapathu said at a briefing last week that Choppies needed FAR Properties in order to establish itself as a business but now both companies have established themselves and can survive independent of each other.
The company has grown because of Choppies, said Karabo Mohohlo from the sponsoring broker African Alliance: In all the countries that Choppies is operating is such as Zimbabwe and Kenya, and this could be a strategy to go into countries such a Tanzania and FAR Properties goes in there to identify more retail properties, with Choppies being the anchor tenant.
A private placement of the shares of the company has actually gone through and the response was quite overwhelming, said Mohohlo.