CURRENT ACCOUNT: Since late November, Sherry FitzGerald has been in the market regularly, buying up 5.5 per cent of its own shares. So is the State's largest estate agent simply using up surplus capital to the benefit of shareholders? Or could the company, the last direct property play on the Irish stock market, be considering taking the path chosen by Dunloe and Green before it and exiting the market?
On the face of it, the company is probably generating cash for which it has no immediate use. Its business model cannot easily be exported while its main method of expansion, through franchise agreements, does not require lots of capital. The share buyback has also been quite successful for the group, boosting liquidity and driving the share price up from €1.20 when it began on November 25th to €1.45 yesterday.
Sherry FitzGerald's shares, however, are already very tightly held and the buyback will have narrowed the shareholder base even further. Between them, chief executive Mark FitzGerald, director of commercial property James Meagher, and Philip Sherry, who manages the countrywide division, own 22 per cent of the company.
At the end of last year, 72 per cent of the company was in the hands of directors and staff. Private shareholders accounted for just 11 per cent of the stock with institutional investors holding the remaining 17 per cent.
Unless staff have been the sole sellers in the recent buyback, as little as a quarter of the stock may now be freely traded. And given that the company has nearly completed the successful introduction of its franchise model nationwide, the rationale for being a publicly quoted company may not be quite as compelling as it was three-and-a-half years ago.
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