This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
DAVID Di Pilla’s active funds management platform HMC Capital is targeting $50 billion in assets under management within the next five years – setting itself an ambitious goal of 42% growth per year in order to bring that forward to just three years.
“We believe this target is highly achievable with each of the platforms exposed to high growth megatrends in sectors with deep and broad investment opportunities,” managing director and group CEO Di Pilla told yesterday’s annual general meeting.
“Each of our platforms can be scaled to at least $10 billion each over the next three to five years.”
Reaching the $50 billion goal over five years would imply annual growth of 23%.
It is on track to achieve $20 billion in assets under management in FY25 across its five divisions of real estate, private equity, private credit, energy transition and digital infrastructure.
HMC last week launched its new ASX-listed data centre asset platform, DigiCo Infrastructure REIT, with its $2.746 billion IPO successfully underwritten. The REIT will own a $4.3 billion in data centre assets across Australia and the United States, with HMC lodging the new REITs prospectus and product disclosure statement with ASIC.
In July, it established its $1.8 billion private credit platform with the acquisition of commercial real estate lender Payton Capital. Di Pilla said HMC has expanded into corporate and asset-based lending with the appointment of a “highly experienced team to build an institutional scale private credit platform”.
HMC is aiming to double its assets under management in private credit in FY25 to over $3 billion, underpinned by growth in Payton’s commercial real estate lending book and the commencement of corporate and asset-based lending activities.
Di Pilla said HMC is in the new year targeting to launch a listed private credit fund which will “provide exposure to a diversified portfolio of institutional grade loans across commercial real estate and corporate and asset based private credit”.
“We believe the scalability of this opportunity is significant and are aiming to grow the listed fund beyond $1 billion over the medium-term.”
Di Pilla also said that based on HMC’s year-to-date performance, annualised pre-tax operating earnings are currently tracking at 70c per share – 52% above the trading update provided in late October and 89% above HMC’s record FY24 result.
“This major step up in earnings has been driven by the continued outperformance of HMCCP (HMC Capital Partners Fund 1) in addition to the establishment of DigiCo REIT which will generate significant recurring and transaction income in FY25.
“Following the establishment of DigiCo, HMC will target approximately two thirds of its earnings base generated from recurring sources.”
Following its recent successful $300 million equity raising and upsize in the corporate credit facility to $600 million, HMC said it is “well capitalised” with $1.9 billion of liquidity and tangible assets.
