Rent.com.au to raise $5.45 million through rights issue

Rental property website Rent.com.au Limited (ASX: RNT) is raising more than $5.4 million through a rights issue to fund its offline branding campaign, the company said in a release.

Rent.com will issue up to 36,376,607 shares at $0.15 each and it is a fully underwritten, non‐renounceable pro rata offer.

The issue will raise $5,456,491 (before costs) and the company will have a total of $8.5 million cash (after costs) after completion of the issue.

The highlights of the fund raising are:  

* Demand for sub‐underwriting allocation was heavily oversubscribed

* Funds to be used primarily on commencing offline marketing activities

Rent.com founder and managing director Mark Woschnak said he was pleased with the strong demand from institutional and sophisticated investors. 

“We recently announced that March 2016 was one of our strongest months on record, with the strongest new agent registrations since listing and all‐time highs in the number of unique visitors and also non‐agent listings on the site,” Woschnak said.

“We have a strong Board and executive team, robust and scalable technology and are now well capitalised to further accelerate our commercialisation objectives by commencing offline marketing activities to support our recently deployed national sales team.”

Shareholders as at the Record Date of April 13 will be eligible to buy one additional share for every three they hold at the Record Date, with acceptance forms to be returned by April 28, the media release said.

The issue price of $0.15 per share represents an 18% discount to the 10-day Volume Weighted Average Price (“VWAP”).

Jett Capital Advisors Pty Ltd are the lead manager and underwriter of the Offer, with GMP Securities acting as brokers.