Property Exchange Australia hires Grant Samuel and reviews capital structure

Glenn King of PEXA. Picture: Jim Rice

Property transfer company Property Exchange Australia has hired Grant Samuel as it embarks on a review of its capital structure.

The appointment comes with talk in the market that the group could be looking at a refinancing.

Sources close to the company say that Grant Samuel had been brought in to assist with creating an appropriate capital structure for a company of PEXA’s size.

PEXA was purchased for all equity during November 2018 in a $1.6bn joint bid with CBA and Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners.

At the time, the company was also exploring a share market float.

Some have questioned whether a listing could once again be on the cards in the not too distant future, but chief executive Glenn King told The Australian in a recent interview that an initial public offering was not on the agenda for the short term, and the future of the company for the medium and longer term was yet to be decided.

A listing of the business would likely see its owners score a windfall, say sources.

PEXA dominates the property transfers market, handling more than 70 per cent of all transactions nationally online.

The e-conveyancing company was established in 2010 as part of an agreement by the Council of Australian Governments to modernise the process of buying and selling property.

Its original shareholders were the state governments and the big four banks.

They were later joined by Macquarie Group, billionaire Paul Little’s Little Group and the then private equity-backed, and now listed, Link Group.

Mr King told The Australian that property transfer numbers for June were shaping up to be stronger than they were a year ago, with new property listings up across the nation and refinancings up a record 30 per cent last month.

This was despite the coronavirus pandemic triggering some slowdown in property settlements over the past three months.

PEXA is also looking at options to expand into Britain and New Zealand, which have similar land transfer systems to Australia.

The appointment of Grant Samuel by PEXA comes after the financial advisory firm was recently hired by Seven West Media to explore options for its debt pile.

Grant Samuel is also working with China’s Tianqi on options for its Australian lithium project, owned by Talison Lithium, which owns the Greenbushes lithium project in the south-west of Western Australia, and Tianqi’s lithium hydroxide plant at Kwinana, south of Perth.