Cairn Homes set for Dublin stock market listing

Irish residential building firm Cairn Homes is backing up its rallying cry for more equity-led builders to drive growth in the housing market by seeking a primary share listing on the Irish Stock Exchange.

The company, which raised €400m from listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2015, announced the plan yesterday and said a Dublin listing had always been its intention but that certain market restrictions to new firms had postponed the plan.

Speaking yesterday, on the back of a solid set of annual results, Cairn’s chief executive Michael Stanley said the Irish housing sector is in need of more domestically-based, publicly-quoted/equity-backed building firms to grow the market, adding that there is a “huge imbalance” between office and residential building projects in Dublin at present.

Asked if Cairn could be viewed as a takeover candidate, Mr. Stanley said developing a long-term publicly-owned Irish housebuilder was the plan when it started building homes in early 2015 and remains so; adding management “won’t be accepting any offer for the business”.

Cairn’s 2016 figures showed strong progress, both financially and operationally. Revenues rocketed from €3.7m to just under €41m and gross profit jumped from €702,000 to €7.1m. On an operating level, the company went from a loss of €3.8m to a profit of €3.64m. On a pre-tax basis, exceptional items led to a loss of just over €2.8m. However, this was down from a pre-tax loss of €37.5m in 2015.

Cairn is currently active on seven sites around the greater Dublin area – supporting over 1,000 construction jobs - and will up that to nine or ten by the end of this year. The company aims to build up to 400 homes this year (up from 105 in 2015), 850 next year and 1,200 in 2019.

It will be selling finished homes on six sites by the autumn, an expansion that is well-timed according to Mr. Stanley.

“We believe that this expansion is well-timed as the supply/demand imbalance for new homes, particularly in the greater Dublin area, where the vast majority of our land bank is located, remains as stark as it was at the time of our IPO,” he said.

He hinted the company could enter into further joint-ventures with Nama, such as the one announced last month which will see the two build 71 homes in north county Dublin.