When a team of people who have already made money for investors re-emerge at a new company, I tend to take notice. So it is with Inland. A specialist in acquiring brownfield development sites, getting planning permission for them and then selling them on, Inland is a vehicle for former directors of Country & Metropolitan Homes. C&M was taken over in the spring of 2005 at a generous price.

I reckon the return for patient investors this time around will be just as good, if not greater. The company came to AIM about a month ago after raising £47.5 million net with a placing at 50p a share through broker KBC Peel Hunt. Since then the shares have moved up almost ten per cent to 53.75.

Run by former C&M founder and chief executive Stephen Wicks, Inland currently has 14 sites in its portfolio. They cover a wide area of south-east England and range from a 25-acre former Ministry of Defence site next to Farnborough airfield to a former pub in Redhill. Two sites have already been flipped to developers. One, in Beaconsfield, achieved an average annual return on capital employed of 94 per cent. The other, in Uxbridge, achieved a 98 per cent return.

The aim, however, is to build a land bank that would be attractive to a ‘major trade buyer’ – in other words repeat the process that attracted Gladedale to pay £72 million for C&M, a company that Wicks and colleagues had brought to the market just six years earlier with a price tag of less than £7 million. Inland may also use its shares to make acquisitions. It already has a stake in a housebuilder, Howarth.

Since the flotation Inland has paid £7 million for a brownfield site that formed part of Ashford Hospital in Middlesex and is just two miles from Heathrow Airport. A planning application is being prepared for a residential development of around 160 homes together with new parking facilities for the hospital. Recently, planning permission was granted for the development of 14 homes in Northwood, Middlesex.

I am reliably informed that £75 million was put up for the recent £50 million share placing and investors were scaled back accordingly. The management team has an unquestioned following in the City. Demand for new sites is strong and there is pressure to go the brownfield route rather than push into the green belt. Inland looks to be in the right place at the right time – and with the right people at the helm. Buy, but be prepared to take a two-year view.

Inland	AIM	£11.66m	7.25p	0.00p
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