Lango Real Estate is a leading pan-African real estate investment company with one goal – to generate sustainable investor returns and high-quality income streams. It does this by investing in prime income producing assets, with a particular focus on commercial property assets in select African cities.
“At the end of the day, we aim to generate high-quality sustainable income,” says Thomas Reilly, CEO of Lango Real Estate. “We are furthermore proud to have class-leading ESG credentials, which we believe will ultimately support a strategy to garner an increased flow of impact-related capital into the African real estate market.”
Bigger, Better, More Sustainable
What Lango is strategically working towards is to bring to the market the first real platform of meaningful scale that will ultimately catalyse the real estate sector in Africa and facilitate investment flows from sophisticated international investors.
“The reality is that the bulk of the players in the landscape that we play in have been subscale to date,” Reilly points out. “Lango is the first real estate company in our space to reach the kind of scale where international, sophisticated investors would see us as a credible entry point to gain access to the African continent. We have approximately $1 billion in assets under management, and growing beyond that, which is a first.”
The scale alone is one point. The second is underpinned by the quality of the assets.
“For a long time, we have had a very considered and strategic mindset,” Reilly says. “Our strategy has focused on investment into top quality assets in key commercial nodes on the African continent.”
But Lango Real Estate’s model is not just built on the quality of its properties, but the quality of its tenants.
“The strategy to invest in prime assets is focussed on ensuring we attract the largest international blue chip companies as tenants,” Reilly points out. “This leads to the nature and quality of the underlying income stream being very strong. Many of our tenants are global household names.”
As well as arguably growing bigger and better than anyone else in the sector, Lango Real Estate also believes in making a positive impact in the region, with the business being labelled with impeccable ESG credentials. The company in this regard has already been accredited with EDGE (Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies) Champion Status.
“This sets Lango Real Estate amongst only a handful of African companies, placing us on a pedestal as a leader in the sector for sustainability,” Reilly explains. “All of these elements when combined, really set Lango apart.”
A Strong Core
Lango Real Estate has lofty ambitions, but it must achieve those ambitions while working within a challenging economic and regulatory environment.
“The challenges of operating in Africa are vast, so let’s start there,” Reilly tells us. “The reality is that we deal in an illiquid market, and navigating and managing risk in that regard has become one of our core strengths. Appropriate management of our liquidity risk, and protecting growing the strength of our balance sheet allows us the ability to not only be defensive when needed, but also to create and take advantage of opportunities as and when they arise.”
Operating in illiquid markets requires management to be proactive across the business spectrum – examples include historical difficulties in externalising earnings in countries such as Nigeria. Whilst these have since been overcome, it highlights the fact that a real estate company’s focus in Africa extends well beyond the real estate space, and often requires a proactive approach with regulators and other stakeholders, along with pursuing active financial risk management and hedging strategies.
“Although we operate in markets that may be perceived as being quite risky, we are inherently a risk averse business,” Reilly shares. “We target a low gearing ratio, with low leverage and a suitable hedging strategy aiming to maximise the generation of distributable income to our shareholders.”
In all these strategies, Lango Real Estate is supported by a grouping of strong international stakeholders with sound financial backing.
As Reilly points out, “It goes without saying that the strength of our shareholder base is beyond reproach, and has allowed us the ability to capitalise on scalable opportunities in difficult markets.”
The company’s cautious approach has also helped protect Lango Real Estate from the interest rate exposure that real estate companies have battled around the world for the last two or three years.
“As part of our risk strategy we have had a very deliberate strategy to mitigate interest rate exposure,” Reilly says. “The onset of Covid saw the interest rate world change dramatically – Lango had fortunately hedged the bulk of its interest rate exposure at historically low underlying interest rates (of close to zero) for the long-term. As a result, Lango was largely protected from the upswing in global interest rates and placed the group in a competitive position vis-à-vis the protection of its balance sheet. That has enabled us to be opportunistic and grow during a difficult period, particularly as other smaller companies have possibly entered some degree of duress.”
A Dynamic Team
The execution of Lango’s strategy has been supported by the shared vision of an enduring and dedicated team. The company has consistently maintained its original core management team and grown the staff complement through a very considered and detailed selection process, with each and every possible recruit being considered not only in terms of capability but as importantly also in terms of their perceived fit and impact on company culture.
“Our mantra is that we would rather focus on someone that will fit into the team, as opposed to finding a potentially outstanding candidate who may not necessarily fit the team culture,” Reilly explains.” If someone is incredibly qualified but not necessarily going to fit in with our team dynamic, we will pass on that person.”
Ultimately, a productive, proactive and cohesive team is instrumental in ensuring the business remains proactive and adjusts appropriately to a challenging and fast-moving environment…Lango’s focus on the team dynamic has resulted in an enviable track record and supported the growth trajectory of the business.
“It’s so important that the team be aligned to the strategy,” he insists. “We are in a fast-growing and rapidly evolving industry and a steady flow of eager and capable talent into the sector has fostered a dynamic culture. Amazingly, looking back on the Lango Real Estate journey itself, since inception we have virtually not lost a single person, which is a testament to the opportunity set and is really unique from a talent retention perspective.”
That team is going to be more important than ever as Lango Real Estate prepares to take a paradigm shift. Historically, Lango Real Estate has been domiciled on the island of Mauritius. When we talk with Reilly, he articulates an exciting path for the company to relocate to the UK, ahead of a planned listing on the London Stock Exchange in early 2026.
“We are strategically scaling up the business, and in this regard recently concluded a $200 million transaction, the largest real estate transaction of the last couple of years,” says Reilly.
Reilly indicated that Lango Real Estate was likely to soon exceed a billion dollars worth of assets under management, and taking its pipeline into account, has the opportunity to approach the $2 billion mark should a successful implementation process eventualise.
“As we head towards the planned listing, we are looking at raising further pre-IPO capital in the interest of matching the growth trajectory of the business and the exciting asset pipeline we have managed to secure,” Reilly says. “We are furthermore also looking at de-leveraging the group where possible, to enable us to maximise the return to our shareholders. In this regard, our pre-IPO readiness exercise has already been initiated.”
