PropertyGuru goes public in $1.7 billion SPAC deal

PropertyGuru has agreed a merger agreement with special acquisition company (SPAC) Bridgetown 2 Holdings, which will see the Singapore-based online real estate marketplace on the New York Stock Exchange. The combined entity is expected to have net worth of $1.78 billion at closing.

The merger is expected to close in Q4 2021 or Q1 2022, subject to regulatory and shareholder approval, PropertyGuru said in a statement over the weekend.

It added that the merged entity would have an enterprise value of approximately $1.35 billion.

Bridgetown 2 was founded by Pacific Century Group, a private investment group founded by Hong Kong entrepreneur Richard Li, and Thiel Capital, founded by German-American entrepreneur Peter Thiel.

Founded in 2007, PropertyGuru has offices in Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. The online platforms currently have more than 2.8 million real estate listings per month, serving 37 million real estate seekers and 49,000 active brokers.

The company said it achieved an average annual sales growth of 25% in the four years before the COVID-19 pandemic, and expected sales to have a compound annual growth rate of 29% between 2020 and 2025.

Projecting Southeast Asia to be the world’s fourth largest economy by 2030, PropertyGuru said the region’s urbanization, rising middle class and digitalization offer significant opportunities for the real estate market. The company pointed to recent purchases it has made to bring new capabilities to its portfolio, including the acquisition of REA Group’s assets in Malaysia and Thailand, expected to close in mid-August 2021, and MyProperty Data, an online data company. for real estate in Malaysia.

PropertyGuru’s CEO and CEO, Hari V. Krishnan, said becoming a publicly traded company would provide the financial resources it needed to continue building the tools to “help people run their homes efficiently.” and transparent way to find, finance and own”.

“We believe the strategic, proactive steps we have taken over the past 18 months will enable us to stay ahead of the evolving needs of the market, increasingly shaped by the growth of affluent and digitally empowered populations who live in cities in Southeast Asia,” Krishnan said.

Noting that the real estate market is only just beginning to develop, Thiel said Bridgetown 2 would provide the capital and expertise to enable PropertyGuru to drive industry transformation in the region.

Li added: “Southeast Asia is a unique market… it has very high economic growth but lacks quality services in many sectors. The burgeoning middle class, increasing urbanization and technological disruption create a unique combination. We recognize the transformational impact of These long-term trends are focused on running our own core businesses and investing in local champions who are successfully using technology to reshape the region’s economy and the way people conduct their daily lives.”

PropertyGuru backed SG$300 million ($220.6 million) in funds last September, which it said would be tapped to build the company’s digital offerings and its expansion plans in the region, particularly Vietnam and Malaysia. by pressing. It added that more investment would be pumped into growth areas such as PropertyGuru Finance, a mortgage platform it launched early last year, and its property management software, FastKey.

Grab also signed a merger agreement with SPAC, Altimeter Growth, in April in what was then touted as the largest U.S. equity offering, with an estimated $39.6 billion, including $4.5 billion in cash proceeds. The deal would pave the way for the public listing of the Southeast Asian mobile platform on Nasdaq.

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