SocietyOne Shareholder Update December 11 2013
SocietyOne Shareholder Update December 11 2013
SocietyOne Shareholder Update December 11 2013
Shareholder Update
December 11 2013
Hello Team.
Amazing but true! Yes not one but two SocietyOne investor updates inside a month!
Please note the following information is extremely confidential and we are sharing
this with you under a permitted disclosure to shareholders in SocietyOne. There will
be a public announcement in the next couple of weeks but until then we are
operating under a strict confidentiality agreement.
Now with that out of the way, I am pleased to announce that we have now finalised
our Series A capital raising round. We have commitments from 3 investors for an $8
million capital raising at a pre money valuation of approx. $22.5 million valuing the
shares at $2.02. This is a 32% increase in share price from the GFC transaction in
August (at $1.53). The lead investor in this round is Westpac Bank who have signed-
on to invest $5 million, followed by GFC investing $2 million and Justin Reizes (Head
of KKR in Australia- investing in his personal capacity) who will be investing a further
$1 million.
We are very excited to have secured Westpac as a lead investor. This is a clearly a
significant milestone in the development of our business. Although its early days I
must say we have found their approach and thinking around innovation and
technology disruption to be very aligned with our own views.
Lets face it this is a pretty big milestone for SocietyOne. It’s the first early stage
investment Westpac have done for “a long time” and securing Westpac as a lead
investor is fantastic validation of the potential of P2P lending in Australia and of
SocietyOne as the obvious category leader. It’s a deal that we expect will generate
interest around the world. Securing a meaningful follow-on investment from GFC
(thanks Oli and Fabian) and bringing an investor of Justins caliber onto the share
register are also clearly significant steps in validating the progress we have been
making at SocietyOne.
None of this would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of the
team at SocietyOne. Nor would it have been possible without the support of our early
investors – a big thanks to all of you guys for supported us on the journey so far.
As part of the Condition Precedent to closing this deal, we have amended the
existing Shareholder agreement and will need all shareholders to sign off on this
agreement ASAP. I have enclosed the final version of the amendment shareholder
agreement. I would suggest that you review it and if you have any questions, please
contact Jerry at 0404420637 or on his email at [email protected].
But please note that we need to start collecting signatures and ticking off the pre-
completion checklist items ASAP so your prompt response is greatly appreciated.
Greg, Jerry or I will contact each of you shortly to set up a time to answer any
questions and obtain your signature on the Shareholders agreement.
In addition, if either Westpac or GFC drop below 10% equity ownership, they
lose the protective provisions.
3) Westpac will have a Right of First Offer (ROFO). If the Company proposes to
undertake an exit process, Westpac will have the right to submit a non-
binding offer to acquire all or substantially all of the stock or assets of the
Company.
In addition, there are several other matters that we will need to finalize over the next
month including:
Regards
Matt
One issue however that warrants a deeper review is the rate of growth of the
personal loan book as that has clearly not grown at our originally forecast
rate. A number of the reasons behind this slower than targeted rate of
growth are set out below including:
• We will continue to grow the personal loan book at a rate that makes
sense given available funding and quality of credit data.
• We will build out additional asset classes that offer investors for
the first time a direct access to a portfolio of non-correlated asset
classes
But as with any business at our stage of growth there are also significant
risks. These include the fact that its taken us a long time to raise money,
that we have not been able to grown the personal loan book at the originally
forecast rate and that competitors will no doubt enter the market in 2014 or
2015.
There are three core elements to our plan to address these risks moving
forward
I’d like to thank team at SocietyOne and you guys for your continued
support.
Also like to thank Murray as chairman who has added lot of rigour to the
board meeting and decision-making processes of the company and been a very
good sounding board for our evoking plans.
Cheers
Matt