One of Jamaica’s newest investment firms, Quantas Capital Group, founded by two former bankers, has secured backing from another member of the Hendrickson family.
Quantas, in which Dr Adrian Stokes and Jacqueline Sharp are founding partners – and both of whom once worked with Scotia Group Jamaica – had its official launch last week, six months into its start-up.
“Kevin Hendrickson, an investor in our business, and Matthew Lyn, also from the Hendrickson family, are investors in Quantas. They’re strategic partners,” said Stokes, adding that institutional investors have also been taking positions in the company for which he is the chief executive while Sharp is chairman.
The Companies Office of Jamaica records show that Lyn is a director of Quantas Capital Limited alongside Stokes, Sharp, Denise Williams and Oliver McIntosh. He is also a director in a second member of the group called Quantum Investments Limited, alongside Stokes and Sharp. Meanwhile, Kevin Hendrickson sits as a director of a third outfit called Quantas Investment Management Limited ,alongside Stokes, Sharp, Williams and McIntosh. Lyn is CEO of the large poultry company CB Group, while Hendrickson owns several hotels in Kingston and Montego Bay and operates the Yummy Bakery and other businesses.
Through Quantas Advantage, the company raised close to $3 billion on the debt market last September, one of the largest capital raises in that year. Within 18 to 24 months, or by December 2024, Quantas Group also plans to float shares in Quantas Advantage through an initial public offering on the Jamaica Stock Market.
“Investors like what they see at Quantas, and they have backed us,” Stokes said.
The individual positions taken by investors was not disclosed.
Through the private placement last year, investors were invited to buy shares in Quantas Advantage, and the proceeds have been used to structure deals revolving mostly around monetising future cash flows or doing advance payments on receivables. Stokes says that, for the receivables they buy, Quantas will package those items into tradable securities.
“That is one of the innovations that we are bringing to the market – a thing called asset-backed securities,” Stokes said, adding that, while such securities are not uncommon in the global arena, they are relatively new in the Jamaican and regional market space.
“What we want to do is to develop the market for asset-backed securities in Jamaica and the region,” he added. “We will free up and transfer capital to SMEs and, by so doing, we will give investors an opportunity to participate in that.”
He would not be drawn on the rates of return being offered on Quantas Advantage, saying only that his company was prepared to outdo what currently obtains in the market. Checks with industry players indicate that rates of return being offered in the market at this time are in the region of seven to 8.5 per cent.
Quantas’ strategy to purchase different types of cash flows also includes lease income.
“If you have a lease agreement on property you own and you receive lease income over time, we can buy that stream of income from you and give you all of that cash up front,” Stokes said, adding that the company has products that take into account the varying risk appetites that exist among investors.
“We are able to structure solutions that will meet the risk appetite for investors who are conservative. We can also create solutions that meet the risk appetite of investors who want to take on some more risk. We have the flexibility to create investment options across the risk spectrum,” he said.
