Ladder Capital Plans $200M IPO

NEW YORK CITY-Ladder Capital Corp. has filed a registration with SEC for IPO of up to $200 million. The company plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LADR. The offering is being made via Deutsche Bank Securities; Citigroup; Wells Fargo Securities; BofA Merrill Lynch; J.P. Morgan, FBR; JMP Securities; and Keefe, Bruyette & Woods.

The finance company, which boasts a proprietary loan origination platform, says in its SEC filing that its primary business strategy is originating first mortgage loans on stabilized, income producing commercial properties that are available for sale in securitizations. From its inception in October 2008 through Sept. 30 of this year, Ladder originated $5.4 billion of conduit CRE loans, $5.1 billion of which were sold into 16 securitizations. That volume makes it the second largest non-bank contributor of loans to CMBS securitizations in the US for that period, according to Commercial Mortgage Alert.

“The securitization of conduit loans has been a consistently profitable business for us and enables us to reinvest our equity capital into new loan originations or allocate it to other investments,” according to Ladder's SEC filing. In addition to conduit loans, the company originated $1.1 billion of balance sheet loans held for investment from inception through Sept. 30. “During that timeframe, we also acquired $5.2 billion of investment grade-rated securities secured by first mortgage loans on commercial real estate and $654.2 million of selected net leased and other commercial real estate assets.”