Strong appetite for P2P sector’s equity crowdfunding campaigns
THIS week has seen the latest equity crowdfunding campaign launch in the peer-to-peer lending sector, as LandlordInvest looks to raise £600,000.
LandlordInvest joins P2P platforms Propifi, Crowdstacker, Landbay and P2P investment manager Orca, who have all decided to raise money via Seedrs or Crowdcube this year.
This route to raising finance has proved to be popular, with most P2P offerings exceeding their funding targets.
These successes bode well for the P2P sector and it is little surprise firms keep returning to crowdfunding.
Serial offerings
Landbay has been one of the biggest users of crowdfunding to date. When the P2P property lender raised £1.6m earlier this year it was its sixth round on the Seedrs platform.
Although it had initially sought £1.25m it attracted almost 300 investors taking the total raised via Seedrs to £6.4m in the last four years.
Landbay said it plans to spend half of the new money raised on technology, with the remaining half split evenly between marketing and general operating expenses.
Landbay is the third most active company on Seedrs’ 10-month-old secondary market, which allows investors to buy and sell shares in businesses funded on Seedrs.
Overfunding
Most P2P lenders’ fundraising campaigns have been overfunded.
Business lender Crowdstacker passed its fundraising target of £800,000 on Seedrs, which is its first major external investment into the business.
Read more: Orca launches £500,000 crowdfunding campaign
It said the funds raised will be used to develop their technology, recruit staff and expand its marketing efforts.
That followed P2P analysis and investment firm Orca, which passed its £500,000 target after opening up its Seedrs crowdfunding campaign to the public.
Orca, which lets people invest across multiple P2P platforms from £1,000, plans to use the funds to grow its customer base, integrate with more lenders, enhance its product features and expand into Europe.
And property platform Propifi raised more than £250,000 in under a month, attracting more than 300 investors to its Crowdcube campaign.
The funds raised on Crowdcube will be used for its one-year plan, which includes Financial Conduct Authority registration as well as web, app and platform development.
LandlordInvest
Now LandlordInvest has joined the crowd and will be hoping to replicate the success of other players from the sector.
As Peer2Peer Finance News reported last week, LandlordInvest embarked on the fundraising in order to scale up its operations.
Read more: LandlordInvest plots crowdfunding round to boost platform