Acorn Group Launches Green Bond

Staff Writer | Jan 20, 2020

Acorn Group, a real estate developer, listed its Kshs 4.3 billion green bond on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE). The five-year bond will be listed in three tranches, with the newly listed first tranche floated at Kshs 786 million. The green bond is intended to finance the developer’s sustainable and climate-resilient student accommodation in Kenya. Acorn Group has already put up approximately 1,000 hostel units located in Parklands, Jogoo Road and Ruaraka under the Qwetu brand.

According to Cytonn Research, modern student hostels have potentially high yields of between 7.2% - 9.6% compared to the conventional real estate sectors i.e., commercial office, retail, and residential, whose average yields were 7.0% as at 2019.

The green bond listing is a step in the right direction towards enabling the real estate sector to raise funds from the capital markets to finance their investment.

For more information, see our Cytonn Q3’2019 Markets Review.

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