Ireland’s largest private sector residential landlord, Ires Reit said it has received an offer of €1.386-a-share from UK investment firm Barings Investment, which would value the business at €726.9 million.
The Dublin-listed apartment owner said the proposal is the fifth that Barings has made since early August. It marks a 30.7 per cent premium to Ires’s closing price on Friday and is broadly in line with its reported net tangible asset value per share as of the end of June.
Ires, led by chief executive Eddie Byrne, said its board “would be minded to recommend” a deal if a formal offer were to emerge by a deadline set for November 9th set by the Irish Takeover Panel.
Shares in the company, which has more than 3,600 rental homes, jumped 20.2 per cent to €1.274 in Dublin.
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Goodbody Stockbrokers analyst Denis McGoldrick said that while the proposal is in line with Ires’s reported net tangible assets, it is below his current valuation assessment of the company and its prospects.
“As such, shareholders will need to weigh the certainty of cash today against the potential value that could be realised through continued operational execution and rental growth in the years ahead,” said McGoldrick.
The approach comes three years after Ires became the subject of a failed campaign, led by then dissident investor, Vision Capital, for the company to be sold or broken up, following years of share price weakness. Vision sold down its stake after reaching a truce in 2024.
Shares in Ires had risen by as much as 25 per cent in the first half of this year amid changes to the State’s rent rules. The new rent legislation, which came into force in March, overhauled the former rent pressure zone (RPZ) system, allowing landlords to reset rents to market rates between tenancies.
Byrne said in August that the new regime had improved the investment outlook for the sector while maintaining protections for tenants.
However, market expectations of a fresh series of interest rate hikes – as central banks tackle inflation – saw Ires’s shares falling from those highs in recent months before the company confirmed the bid approach.
Barings International Investment survived the collapse of its then parent Barings Bank in 1995, resulting from rogue investments carried out by trader Nick Leeson, as Dutch financial giant ING acquired the group for a nominal sum of £1. ING subsequently sold Barings Investment Management to Boston-based MassMutual Financial Group in 2005.
Ires is the fourth Irish public company to become the subject of a takeover bid this year. PTSB agreed in April to be taken over by Austria’s Bawag, London-listed DCC Energy struck a deal in July to be bought by US private equity firms KKR and Energy Capital Partners, while Irish Continental Group (ICG) succumbed later that month to a management buyout bid.
If Ires ends up being taken over, it will leave only 20 companies listed on the Irish stock market’s main and growth markets. With Malin Corporation and Donegal Investment Group currently in wind-down mode, the exchange’s operator, Euronext Dublin, will soon struggle to fill all the spots on the benchmark Iseq 20 index if it does not succeed in attracting initial public offerings (IPO) after a drought in such activity in the past five years.
A property real-estate investment trust (Reit) called GDL Management Group floated in Dublin at the end of August. However, this was the result of a technical listing to comply with Irish Reit rules and the company’s shares have yet to trade.
The three other property trusts that floated in Dublin following the introduction of Reit legislation in 2013 – Green Reit, Hibernia Reit and Yew Grove Reit – were all subsequently acquired off the market.
Ires is being advised by investment bankers in Rothschild, Barclays and Davy.
