This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
Strong tailwinds in the residential property and developers appetite for private real estate private credit shows no signs of slowing, according to Qualitas.
The alternative real estate investment manager reported a 28% jump in first half year profit after tax of $16.206 million, compared to $12.639 million in the previous corresponding period. The result was supported strong growth in funds management revenue, rising 19% to $30.8 million.
Cofounder and managing director Andrew Schwartz said the group’s FUM has nearly doubled since IPO, and fee earning FUM skyrocketed by 41% to $7.9 billion.
“December 2024 marked the third anniversary of Qualitas’ listing on the ASX. We’ve delivered strong organic growth since IPO with our FUM and recurring revenue more than doubling. Fee earning FUM has nearly tripled driven by strong deployment.
Schwartz said Australia’s commercial real estate private credit market is still in its early stages compared to other geographies and is well positioned to further grow given strong residential tailwinds and access to attractive risk-adjusted returns.
“Looking forward, we are excited about the growth runway for private credit in Australia. We are confident that with our access to sticky institutional capital, along with our origination capabilities, we can continue to drive long-term growth.
“Of our total deployment in 1H25, 85% was in the residential sector and was skewed to the second quarter of FY25. This provides good visibility for strong base management fee growth in 2H25,” he added.
“Our FY25 year-to-date pipeline and closed transactions as at January 2025 have reached $3.8 billion, up 12% on the same period last year. We believe that we are at the start of the next residential development cycle and as economic indicators improve in anticipation of rate cuts later this year, we believe we are potentially entering a highly conducive deployment environment,” he continued.
Qualitas has reaffirmed its market guidance for FY25 of normalised group net profit before tax of between $49 million and $55 million, representing an increase of 26% to 41% respectively on FY24 and EPS between 11.50 cps and 12.91 cps.
