Game City expansion nears completion
Pauline Dikuelo | Thursday October 27, 2016 15:57
The developments include additional retail space, which has a fashion avenue, restaurant area, including a food court, entertainment area and a parkade.
According to the group’s managing director, Gulaam Abdoola the additional space is almost completely pre-let. The project is financed through a long-term loan of P250 million from Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) Botswana. The group also announced that the development of Phase three, Mlimani City Tanzania is nearing completion. Mlimani City is being expanded to include additional retail and commercial spaces including basement parking, additions to the conference centre and a botanical garden.
“The additional space is also pre-let to a large extent. The expansion is expected to cost $25 million. Barclays Bank of Botswana enhanced the project for $20.7 million while Turnstar Holdings contributed $4.3 million. The expected date of completion is January 2017,” Abdoola said.
In addition, the managing director said the group intends to launch an offering of the dollar-denominated senior unsecured compulsory convertible bonds to raise gross proceeds to fund the expansion of Mlimani City.
He said the convertible bond offering forms part of the company’s strategy to deliver continued capital and distribution growth to its linked unitholders driven by active asset management and portfolio enhancing developments.
“It is expected that the convertible bonds will be issued during November 2016 for a period of seven years maturing in 2023. The estimated maturity conversion rate is expected to be between P5 and P5.40,” he said.
Further, Abdoola said the dollar depreciated against the pula significantly, during the half-year ended July 31, 2016 noting that as such a significant foreign exchange translation loss has been reported when translating the dollar-denominated investments and other financial assets of the company in the group’s Tanzanian subsidiary, Mlimani Holdings Ltd.
The subsidiary reports in dollar currency, whilst the group’s functional currency is in pula.