Landex.AI First Half of 2024 Update
Below please find updates for Landex.ai for H1-2024.
Introduction
Below please find updates for Landex.ai for H1-2024.
While the economic situation continues to be difficult in Estonia affecting both land and property prices, we have managed to keep the company afloat, investor funds are safe and the lands are owned by a separate entity. We are looking for more scalable alternatives to the current ‘buy and hold’ business model which would give investors more frequent cash flow, such as land loans.
Key Performance Metrics
User metrics - cumulative user count stands now at 2665 users, of which about 1.3k are active investors (see Appendix for a graph)
Investment metrics - cumulative investments as of beginning July 2024 are 656,368 EUR.
Deposit metrics - cumulative deposits as of beginning July 2024 752,398 EUR.
Financials - the platform is currently break even with runway till at least till the end of the year as the operating costs are kept near 0.
Figure - Cumulative User Count - 2655 (as of Jul-2024)
Figure - Cumulative Monthly Investments - 752,397.91 EUR (as of Jul-2024)
Figure - Cumulative Monthly Deposits - 656,368 EUR (as of Jul-2024)
Operational Updates
Team updates:
Departures - our COO Johannes Artma had to leave us during the first quarter and hence there has significantly less marketing activity and some operational delays. However, the founders have keeping the platform alive part time and addressing critical activities such as processing incoming and outgoing payments.
New Hires - if you are a shareholder or an investor on the platform and interested in joining the team and to help to keep the platform going and growing it further, please express your interest at info@landex.ai.
Rental incomes and liquidity:
Rental incomes - there were delays in collecting the rents Q1-2024 both due to losing our COO (see above), but also some tenants delaying their rental payments. We hope to complete the collections by the end of July and start distributing rental incomes as soon as possible.
Liquidity - many investors have asked if it would be possible to sell some lands to get liquidity. Given that Estonia is in its deepest recession in the past 10 years, a fire sale of land plots would mean a significant loss of capital. However, we will consider sales at discount but we will put such sales on vote through our existing voting mechanism.
Future Plans and Regulation
Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) license - we have evaluated applying for an AIF license (a total cost of about 5k EUR) with the Estonian FSA, instead of the heavier crowdfunding license. This would help us to get regulated with the Estonian FSA at a significantly lower cost than a crowdfunding license (expected to be around 50k EUR with legal fees). Note that of about 20 crowdfunding platforms currently operating in Estonia, only two (2) are licensed under the crowdfunding license - EstateGuru.co and CrowdEstate.eu - so our situation is not unusual. In practice, similar protections would apply to investors with minor restrictions on how and where we could market to new investors.
Land financing - there are many emerging land credit platforms such as Heavy Finance (LT / PL) indicating that the demand for this product is strong as banks are not allowed or do not wish to lend in the agricultural sector. Pivoting to a new business model would require some additional investment so we are currently in the process of evaluating different options.
Your Feedback
For any feedback and questions, as always please email us directly at info@landex.ai. We will try to also address your individual queries which we have received a number over past few weeks and months.