The wave of offerings by US real estate companies in Tel Aviv continues. Today, Treetop Realty, owned by Azi Mandel and Adam Mermelstein, published a draft prospectus. The offering will be managed by Clal Underwriting.
Treetop Realty Ltd. seeks to raise several tens of millions of dollars. It joins two other companies that have recently published draft prospectuses: Related Commercial Portfolio Ltd., owned by Stephen Ross, and GFI Real Estate Limited, owned by Allen Gross. These three offerings will bring the number of US real estate companies with bonds traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to ten.
Mandel and Mermelstein founded Treetop in 2005. It currently owns about 70 residential properties, mostly in New York and New Jersey. They contain some 5,900 housing units, half of them subject to the Federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program designed to assist low income earners with rent. Mandel and Mermelstein plan to transfer 30 properties to the unit making the issue in Tel Aviv. The money raised in the offering is earmarked for further investments in its field of business and recycling of existing debt.
Treetop is a fairly small firm, and some on the local market have said that it is making its offering before time. Its current revenue was $1.5 million in 2013 and $2 million in the first nine months of 2014. Like most of the real estate enterprises that came to Tel Aviv last year, Treetop has revalued its properties upwards. It made a total net profit of $34 million in January-September 2014, after revaluations totaling a similar amount.
At the end of September 2014, Treetop had shareholders' equity of $61.5 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 12, 2015
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