City round-up: Together; Surface Transforms; Redx Pharma
Together Financial Services, the Cheadle-based specialist mortgage and secured loans provider, has announced the refinancing of Highfield Asset Backed Securitisation 1 Limited (HABS), its warehouse facility for the group’s small balance commercial real estate MBS programme, with commitments of £525m.
The refinancing extends the maturity of HABS to September 2025 and delivers an improvement in commercial terms reflecting the performance of the assets supported by the facility.
The HABS warehouse facility was originally launched in 2018 to fund the origination of small balance commercial real estate (CRE) loans, primarily to support small and medium-sized businesses and commercial property investors in the UK.
The refinancing follows the successful issuance of the group’s first two public CRE mortgage-backed securitisations, TABS – CRE1 and TABS – CRE2, in March and June 2021, respectively.
Gerald Grimes, group CEO designate of Together, said: “We are delighted to announce the successful refinancing and extension of our small balance commercial real estate warehouse facility, HABS, as we continue to grow our business and support the UK’s small and medium sized enterprises.”
Gary Beckett, group managing director and chief treasury officer at Together, said: “This is our fifth funding transaction since January and clearly demonstrates the continued momentum in, and support for, the Together growth story.”
Together now has six public securitisations, five private securitisation facilities, two series of senior secured notes, and a revolving credit facility.
Since January 2021, Together has successfully raised or refinanced more than £1.5bn of debt facilities to support the group’s lending activities, improving commercial terms and adding further depth of maturity to its funding platform.
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Surface Transforms
Knowsley-based brakes specialist, Surface Transforms, today revealed changes to its manufacturing strategy which will result in savings, and a new contract worth €5m.
The firm makes brakes for high performance cars and aircraft.
It said its new manufacturing strategy will save approximately £10m in equipping the entire Knowsley factory, increasing 2023 sales capacity by £15m per annum, from £35m pa to £50m pa with no new capital equipment cash requirement. It will also reduce implementation time for equipping the entire factory by approximately 18 months, significantly increase capacity implementation flexibility beyond 2022 as the business grows over the next two to three years, and reduce Surface Transforms’ projected carbon footprint using more environmentally-friendly furnace technology.
The company reiterated that its primary objective remains to ultimately provide a factory with sales capacity of £75m pa.
Chief executive, Kevin Johnson, said: “At the time of the fund raising we said that we thought there could be sufficient demand to fill the Knowsley factory by 2025, albeit the sales were then, and are still now, only partially contracted.
“Our continuing discussions with existing and potential customers, together with increasingly encouraging test results, have not only lifted our confidence in this view but led us to the conclusion that we may require this capacity by 2024.
“This new manufacturing strategy will achieve the primary capacity objective with the added benefit of reducing overall capital expenditure. There are numerous positive cash implications, and we continue to work with our customers to convert the significant number of active projects into firm agreements to fill this capacity.”
The company also announced today that it has been selected as a tier one supplier of a carbon ceramic brake disc to its existing mainstream customer, described previously as OEM5. The car is a facelift to an existing internal combustion engine model with start of production in quarter one 2024. The lifetime value of the contract is expected to be approximately €5m spread over the five years from 2024 to 2028.
Kevin Johnson said: “The significance of this relatively small contract lies in it being the first example of the implementation of the multi-year ‘carry over’ agreement concluded with OEM5 at the time of the initial contract award in July 2019. This envisaged further awards, of varying sizes, over several years.
“A further award in 2020 did not happen because of a COVID-induced programme cancellation by the customer. It is good to be now back on track. The engineers in both companies are now working on the next vehicle brake disc that is available for award over the next year. We are greatly enjoying working with this customer and look forward to further deepening our relationship.”
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Lisa Anson
Cheshire drugs discovery business Redx Pharma has announced that a milestone payment of $3m from Jazz Pharmaceuticals has been triggered as a result of the initiation of IND-enabling studies of JZP815, used in the treatment of cancer.
Under the deal, Redx is entitled to up to $203m in development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments. The Alderley Edge company is also eligible for royalties based on any future net sales.
The next milestone payment under the agreement is due on acceptance of an Investigational New Drug (IND) application by the US Food and Drug Administration. As part of a separate ongoing collaboration agreement, Jazz paid Redx to perform research and preclinical development activities to progress the programme to this stage, with the goal of completing IND-enabling studies.
Lisa Anson, Redx chief executive, said: “We are extremely pleased that Jazz Pharmaceuticals has initiated IND-enabling studies for the Pan-RAF inhibitor programme that Jazz acquired.
“The continuing success of this programme highlights, once again, Redx’s ability to generate molecules that have significant potential as novel medicines for unmet medical needs.”
